Scarlet Witch
by Mediancat
Summary: The problem this time is scientific, not magical, and the only one who can help is on the run from pretty much everyone. Can Willow find her in time?
1. In Unison

In _Buffy_ terms, this is set after season 7; I don't follow season 8 continuity.

In terms of the other show, it's set after the _Astraeus_ astronauts have been repatriated. After that, it spins off on its own.

As for Buffy, though, it and all of its characters are the creation of Joss Whedon. _Eureka_ was created by Andrew Cosby and Jaime Paglia.

X X X X X

Willow came racing into Council Headquarters in Warren, Maryland, Kennedy a half-second behind her. "What's going on?"

"Faith didn't tell you?" Andrew said nervously.

"All Faith said was that something had happened to Buffy and Dawn – but that they weren't dead - and I needed to get back here as soon as possible."

"Oh."

"Oh?" Kennedy said. "That didn't sound like a good oh, Andrew."

"What happened?" Willow asked, panic in her voice.

"Um, maybe -"

Kennedy had Andrew slammed against the wall before he could get out another word. "Spit it out, or spit out your teeth."

"!" he gasped out.

At Willow's nod, Kennedy let Andrew down. "Follow me," he said. He led them through the corridors into the medical wing.

At least it wasn't the morgue.

Finally, they went through one last door, into a room. Dawn was on one bed, Buffy was on the other. They were both conscious and both lying on their backs.

"Willow!" they said in unison.

Looking at Andrew with a puzzled expression, Willow said, "They seem fine."

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" they also said together. "Try again."

"Some kind of spell?" Kennedy asked.

"No clue," they said. "It started gradually, a few days ago. I'd say something and Dawn, three miles away, would say the same thing. Or I'd be dancing and Buffy'd be doing the same thing. And believe me, that's no fun when you're trying to kill a vampire. Fortunately, the vampire found the whole thing hilarious and laughed herself sick, and before she could stop the spell ended and Buffy managed to kill her. Last time I went out, believe me. Since then it's only gotten worse."

"I thought you said it wasn't a spell," Kennedy said.

"Like a fainting spell, not like magic spell," Andrew said.

Willow said, "How did this happen?"

Andrew replied, "We have no idea. Faith and Vi are leading a troop of Slayers out beating up anyone and everyone who might know something, much like Batman would have, while Mr. Giles and some of our witches are trying to find out what spell it might be."

"You sharing everything?" Kennedy asked.

They shook their heads simultaneously. "No. I don't know what she's thinking, thank the gods, and I don't know what she's thinking either, though it's probably something about shoes. Hey!"

Willow said, "I've never heard of something like this. Not in any spellbook I've ever read. Good or evil. Not that I read the evil ones all that much anymore."

"All that much?" Buffy and Dawn said sharply.

"I don't read them to pick up tips, missy – _missies_ – but I do have to know what's out there I might need to look out for. You know? Anyway, what would the point of a spell like this be?"

"Obviously, to take me out of circulation," the sisters said.

Rolling her eyes quickly – Willow saw it, but she would've bet demons to diamonds that Buffy didn't – Kennedy said, "Lousy way to do it. They could shoot you, poison you, or do half a dozen other things. It'd be a lot easier and take a lot less work."

"Not everyone's as blunt as you are, Kennedy," the sisters said.

"It's part of my charm," Kennedy said.

"I'm going to check something," Willow said before Kennedy-Buffy part XIV could begin. (They respected each other as Slayers, but still didn't like each other much as people. They would and could work together when they had to, but that rarely stopped the sniping.) "Hold on." And then she closed her eyes and a wave of magic crossed the room, then back, and held steady over Buffy and Dawn.

After concentrating for a few seconds, Willow said, "It isn't magic."

"What?" Kennedy said.

A second later Buffy and Dawn echoed the sentiment. "What do you mean?"

Willow said, "That was a full checkup I just did, head to toe, inside and out, and there's no magic at all in there that shouldn't be there."

"Um, then what's causing the problem?" Andrew asked. "I mean, I'm no mighty witch like you, but I do know something about magic, and this sure _seems_ magical."

"Yeah, it does, but it's not," Willow said.

"You think we're doing this for shits and giggles?" the sisters said. "Faith's a bad influence. Still, Dawn has a point. If it's not magic, what is it?"

"Science."

Everyone said simultaneously, "What?"

X X X X X

A few hours later, after Faith and company were back from their forays into creative interrogation and Giles had come up for air, everyone, minus Buffy and Dawn, who had enough difficulty making their way around their one room without a problem, (and the less said about bathroom trips, the better), and Xander, who was still stuck in the New Delhi airport, gathered so that Willow could explain what was going on.

"Are you certain that this is is scientific?" Giles said.

"That's a big yes," Willow said. "I double-checked and triple-checked and then had a couple of the other witches independently verify. This is one hundred percent science."

"What are they?" Giles asked.

"I don't know. Not exactly. If I had to specify, I'd use the word nanobots."

"It's aliens!" Andrew said.

"It's not aliens," Kennedy said firmly.

Andrew, a bit whinily, said, "It could be aliens . . ."

"Actually, he's right," Willow said.

"I am?"

"He is?"

"Fuck." This from Faith, on the off chance you couldn't guess. "Aliens? Seriously?"

"Well, I'm not saying it _is_," Willow said, "Just that it's a possibility. This is well beyond any science I've ever heard of. It's possible it could be something incredibly high-tech that hasn't been written about, and I'd say that's _more_ likely than aliens, but I'm saying, don't write them off."

Vi said, anxiously, "Can you fix it?"

Shaking her head, Willow said, "No. Not quickly, anyway. I tried to shut them off magically and they both started having seizures. Then I tried to simply put a field between the two of to block it off, and the same thing happened. It's not actually hurting them at the moment, so I stopped trying."

"Indeed," Giles said. "We have not yet reached the point where we are willing to try anything to solve the problem. Faith, did you and Vi have any luck tracking down the perpetrator?"

"Yeah. All bad. If this is any kind of plot against us no one we've talked to knows a damn thing."

"What she said," Vi added. "One of them even asked why we thought they'd bother. Seemed like a good point, actually."

"Maybe," Kennedy said, "to keep us busy fixing what's wrong with Buffy so we're not paying attention to something else going down."

Giles nodded. "A good point. Faith, increase the patrols tonight and tell everyone to keep their ears to the ground, if you would."

"As for me," Willow said, "I'm going to work the science angle. If this is something from this planet, then it's probably a government project, and if it's that, then we know someone who can help."

X X X X X

"Willow?"

"Hi, Riley."

"Got back to you as soon as I could."

"What'd you find?"

"I can't tell you on the phone. Can we meet somewhere?"

"Sure. There's a Baja Fresh a few miles away from here; see you there in an hour?"

"See you then."

X X X X X

Willow was waiting at the restaurant when Riley Finn got there. They ordered and sat down. "Do you know any privacy spells?" Riley asked.

"Sure, but I'd like to get my food and we won't hear them call our number if I cast it now."

So they engaged in small talk for a few minutes until their food was ready. Then, as Riley dug into his burrito, Willow surreptitiously cast the spell and then said, "And once again with the what'd you find?"

"Something you're not going to like. And it ties back to the Initiative."

"Of course it does," Willow said. "If I wasn't committed to the side of good and, you know, thought that resurrection spells were ideas beyond bad and well into uberhorrible, I'd cast one on Maggie Walsh just so I could let Buffy beat her up for a few weeks or so."

"I'd be right behind you," Riley said. "Anyway, here's what I found, and it took a lot of digging and favors to get even this much. One time when Buffy came to the Initiative, hurt, Colonel Walsh insisted she be bandaged up. Seemed weird to me at the time, but she was persistent enough that eventually Buffy said yes, probably just to shut her up."

"Mistake?"

"Big time. From the records I was able to read, the bandages were coated with a kind of experimental nanotechnology designed to let someone take control of someone remotely, if they had the right device. But Adam killed Colonel Walsh a few weeks later, and the machine was destroyed in the last firefight."

"Why didn't Adam use it on Buffy, then?"

Riley said, "He wouldn't have been able to. It needs a human on both ends, and he wasn't close enough."

"I suppose we can thank our lucky stars for that, anyway," Willow said as she bit into her quesadilla. "Could you find the plans?"

"No. I found a description buried deep in a file that had nothing to do with the Initiative, but that's it. It lists everyone who worked on it and pretty much all of them died during the last battle."

"So the machine's destroyed, the people who created it are dead, and the Initiative's buried under tons of concrete so I can't even get to the computers to try to hack them."

"Willow, I would have been able to tell you "sorry, can't help" over the phone. _Pretty much_ all of them died. There's one who wasn't. I got you her name and the last place she was seen." He took a deep breath. "Unfortunately, she probably won't be there; at this point she's marked down to be arrested on sight by pretty much every law enforcement agency in the country."

Willow sighed. "Tell me her name and address, then; I'll go from there."

"Her name's Beverly Barlowe,and the last place she was seen was a small town in Oregon. It's called Eureka."


	2. Scarlet Witch

Note: To the answer to the question, "What was on the WB Tuesdays at 8 in the Buffyverse?" I have always used a show called _Freedom_, about a teenage female superhero. The show, of course, starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as Melinda Miller, aka Freedom. So Fargo's SMG obsession is still in play, just because of a different show.

I've also changed the title. With "Eurisko" I was going for the transliteration of a Greek word meaning "I will find," but I didn't conjugate it correctly.

X X X X X

"Why's Beverly Barlowe being hunted by everyone?" Willow asked

"I can't tell you – and that's can't, not won't. Again, I was lucky to get this much. I had to invoke my security clearance about as often as I breathed. _That_ she's being looked for is public knowledge; she's considered dangerous, but not armed, but trying to find out what she did is about as easy as someone trying to find out what I did. Here's what I do know about Dr. Barlowe, though." Riley handed Willow a couple of sheets of paper.

Willow looked them over. Beverly Barlowe, born in Corvallis, Oregon about fifty years ago; a doctorate with multiple specialties, including psychiatrist and neurologist; five feet seven inches tall with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes; last seen in Eureka, Oregon around the time of the disappearance of Senator Alice Wen. "Do they think she kidnapped the Senator?" she asked.

Riley took a sip of his soda and said, "Maybe, but she's been up on the wanted list for quite a while, so that's only part of it. Also – there's something odd about Eureka."

"Sunnydale odd?"

"Hard to say. Fewer deaths, and no reports of people falling on barbecue forks, but the place has a weird vibe to it. When I asked, I was told that the area wasn't any of my concern. And anything supernatural is kind of our concern, so I'm not sure what."

"Hmmm. Could be science-based, then." Willow took a bite of her pinto beans.

"Could be. The place is dominated by a company called Global Dynamics and I - what's funny?"

Willow had chuckled the second she heard Riley mention Global Dynamics. "I don't know if Buffy told you about when I met Oz, but around that time we had Career Day, and, well, Global Dynamics pulled me and Oz into a room by ourselves and tried to recruit us. I've heard from them a couple of times since and always given them the big no. I think this year I might change my mind."

He grinned. "You have an in."

"I _definitely_ have an in."

X X X X X

Jo Lupo picked up her phone on the second ring. "Lupo here."

Zane's voice came through the other end. "Hey, Jo. Could you come down here? There's something I need to show you."

"I don't have time for that right now," Jo said.

"It's a great time for some sexual innuendo, Jojo, but I actually need you in an official capacity. Someone's been trying to hack GD's servers."

Jo shrugged. "So? Half the senior class at Tesla does that for science projects every year."

"I wouldn't have wasted your time with amateurs," Zane said. Some of those amateurs had been known to break into the Pentagon's computers, but never mind. "This is someone who knows what they're doing. I mean, I'm here typing as fast I can and I'm barely able to keep up with them."

"I'll be right down," Jo said. Zane told her where he was, and she hung up. On her way down she called Fargo – both because as head of GD he should be in the loop, and because, while not quite tas good at pure hacking as Zane was, he knew GD's computers backwards and forwards.

"What's going on?" she asked when she got there. Somehow Fargo had beaten her there.

"_Someone_," Fargo said in an irritated voice, "Is trying to access our personnel files." His fingers were moving as fast as Zane's, on a separate keyboard. "But we're not going to let that happen, are we, Zane?"

"No, we're not," Zane said calmly.

"Wait," Jo said. "The _personnel_ files? They're not looking at projects?"

"Haven't come even close. And, if we can believe her, she's not interested," Zane said.

"Her?"

"She's actually written us a couple of messages," Fargo said.

"Yeah, and normally when a hacker does that in the middle of a job they're taunting you, but she sounded like she was sorry she was doing this." He shook his head. "I thought this one was retired, too. No one's heard much from her in the last few years."

Jo blinked. "You've heard of her?"

"Yeah. Calls herself the Scarlet Witch. Old-school kind of hacker; she's not out to steal things."

"Well, isn't that good to know," Fargo said sarcastically. "She's only breaking in here to prove she can." After a second, "This isn't supposed to be possible at all. I helped design the security for these systems myself. There are only a couple of access points into Eureka in the first place, and the defenses _should_ make your average firewall seem like a puff of smoke."

"Well," Zane said with a note of admiration on his voice, "She blew through those like they were electronic tissue paper."

"Zane," Fargo said, "It's nice that you've met one of your heroes but could you spend a little less time kissing her feet and a little more time concentrating on _stopping her_?"

Since Zane was talking while he typed, Jo figured Fargo was just blowing off steam. That he was still mourning Holly Marten's death almost certainly didn't help. He'd reached the point where he was perfectly capable of running GD, but that was about it. Zane apparently figured the same thing, because he didn't snark back, instead making a show of working even harder.

Right then, a chat window opened up. "Okay. Got what I wanted. Sorry about this! This -" and a dozen lines of gibberish appeared -" should stop anyone else from using the same exploit I did. Bye-"

Zane blinked. "She's gone. Fargo, you get the code too?"

Fargo said. "Yes. Delete it."

After a second, Zane said, "What? This'll close the hole she just exposed – if she could find it, someone else could. You know that."

"Like I'm going to trust the person who just broke in to tell me how to improve my security. I'm the head of GD. Delete it." And saying this, Fargo deleted it from his own screen, then came over to watch Zane. "And now that we know there's a hole there, we can fix it ourselves. In fact, I want you to make that your priority."

Sardonically, Zane snapped off a salute and said, "Will do, boss."

Nodding, Fargo said, "Good." After a second he added, "Saluting. I like that. Jo -"

"If you think I'm going to salute you, Fargo, you're out of your mind."

Huffily, Fargo said, "It was just a thought."

"Remember when almost everyone at GD tried to kill you?" Jo said. "Try that and we won't need one of Parrish's weapons to get the same reaction."

"Understood," Fargo said, and left.

Jo turned to Zane. "Did you manage to pick up anything on this 'Scarlet Witch?'

"Not much," Zane said. "She kept me pretty busy making sure she stayed away from the design specs."

"Get me whatever you can find, okay?"

"I love it when you get commanding."

X X X X X

"I realize I may never be fully up to the etiquette of computer hacking," Giles said, "But why, if you plan to visit the city, did you put them on alert by attempting to break into their computer files instead?"

"Going to Eureka's the backup plan. A backup plan that has now become plan A, because while I was able to get some stuff Riley didn't tell me, I wasn't able to get enough. This Beverly Barlowe, well, she's definitely not on Santa's nice list; she's apparently been involved in kidnapping, theft, and possible high treason, among other things."

"Among _other_ things? The woman sounds like a match for Ethan Rayne."

Willow said, "Close, but she's not violent and apparently stops short of killing people."

"Thin gruel to qualify as a blessing, though, if that's the best thing that can be said of her," was Giles' response. "Even if you track this Barlowe woman down, what are the odds that you'll even be able to persuade her to assist?"

"I'm hoping she has some kind of conscience," Willow said. "Otherwise I might, you know, try a page from your book."

"Ah. And which book and which page would that be?" Giles asked, suspicion evident in his voice.

"The big book of intimidation. Because you can be pretty darned scary when you want to be, mister."

"I assume you are planning to stop short of actual beatings?"

"Only if things get desperate," Willow said. "I've kept this evil side in for, oh, about two years now and I'd kind of like to have her stay bottled up. Not so much with the wanting to end the world at the moment."

"Imagine my relief," Giles said sarcastically. "Do let me know if your plans change in that regard."

"You'll be the first." A deep breath, and then, "I've already heard back from Global Dynamics, in fact. They said they'd be glad to have us join them."

"That was accomplished with remarkable speed."

"Apparently, they don't mess around. Deep security check on my background. Don't worry; I already got rid of anything particularly incriminating."

"And your companion?" Giles asked.

"Less than nothing. No need to scrub her background because there was nothing to scrub. There are clean rooms dirtier than her." After a second, "I was surprised when I found out she already had an MS and was going for a doctorate in plant biology in her spare time. And, you know, GD contacted her a couple of years back as well. Though apparently scientific genius runs in her family, so maybe that shouldn't be a problem."

"All very nice, but I was asking for a name. I am assuming you are not talking about Miss Kennedy."

Willow nodded; that was a safe assumption. Kennedy was good at business but wasn't particularly gifted in, or interested in, science. "Oh. Right," she said. "It's Vi."


	3. Invasive Species

I'm assuming that the existence of Global Dynamics is not, itself, secret, even if what the place does is. There's also a time jump in this chapter of a couple of days.

X X X X X

"Hey, Jo," Sheriff Jack Carter said to his former (well, in an alternate timeline, anyway, and since he'd come from that timeline as far as he was concerned she was still former) deputy. "What do you need?"

Deputy Andy then walked out of the bathroom. Jack did _not_ want to think about what he was doing in there. "Hello, Ms. Lupo!" he said cheerfully.

Jo said, "Hey, Andy. Just wanted to let the two of you know that Zane and Fargo had to try to beat back a _serious _attempt to hack GD's servers."

"How serious?" Jack asked.

"Zane and Fargo working together couldn't completely shut her down."

"Say, that is serious," Andy said.

While not being a genius, Jack agreed and recognized it for what it was: an impressive, if scary, fact. "Things have to be desperate if you're coming to me for computer help," he said with a slight grin.

Obviously repressing the desire to roll her eyes, Jo shot back, "I don't think they're ever going to be _that_ desperate. Anyway, Zane's trying to figure out as much as he can about her, and I'll give you whatever I get."

"Unless she was nice enough to send a photo, I don't think that'll help."

"No, but there are things he _can_ do. Don't ask me what they are, because after about three sentences I'm as lost as you are."

"Anything you _can_ tell me? 'Someone tried to hack GD' doesn't give me a whole lot to go on."

Andy said, "Ms. Lupo did say 'she," boss."

"Well, _that_ narrows it down," Jack said. "Now instead of 300 million people, I only have 150 million or so."

"If we deduct those under 5," Andy said, "Those in comas, and those who are mentally or physically incapable, that number can be reduced to 138,253,955."

"Thanks, Andy," Jack said.

"Sure thing, Boss!" Andy said enthusiastically.

"I also have her hacker name: The Scarlet Witch," Jo said.

"Hmm." Jack said.

"Hmmm?" Jo echoed.

"I might actually be able to do something with that."

"Carter –?"

"What?" Jack said. "I _did_ spend a dozen years as a US Marshal before I came here. I'm pretty good at tracking people down."

"You were just complaining about how hard it would be your to dig anything up," Jo said. "This is one extra detail."

"Sometimes one extra detail makes all the difference," Jack said. "Anyway, I was just heading over to Cafe Diem; want to join me?"

Jo said, "I don't have time. Fargo's demanding hourly updates and since he and Zane agree about how serious this was I can't even threaten to throw him through the wall. But there was one other thing: GD's got a couple of new employees coming in. I've sent you an e-mail with their files on them, so if you see them, there's nothing to worry about."

Jack said he'd keep an eye out, and Jo left.

"Um, Boss?" Andy said as Jack stood up and began walking towards the door "There's something you might want to know about one of the new employees."

"Andy, is she a fugitive, a terrorist, a three-headed monster, or my former mother-in-law?"

"No, but-"

"Then tell me later."

After a second, Andy nodded. "Will do."

A few days later, Jack would fervently wish he'd taken ten extra seconds to listen to Andy.

X X X X X

"You know," Vi said as she and Willow drove down I-84, "If this whole Slayer thing hadn't come up, I was totally going to take Global Dynamics up on their offer. As soon as I got my doctorate, I mean."

"Which would take you, what? Another two weeks?" Willow asked.

"At least three," Vi said. "Maybe four if I had to squeeze it around another apocalypse."

"I wasn't taking shots; I'm really impressed. I mean, you're 19, you've been Slaying for a couple of years and were kind of holed up in Sunnydale for months before that. Where did you find the _time_?" Willow'd picked up her own MS in computer science and was working on a doctorate, but a witch's job was a lot more with the down time than a Slayer's job. Slayers, working pretty much every night. Witches could have weeks where they weren't doing much. That's where she and Kennedy had been when Faith had called: on vacation in Key West.

"It's not _that_ impressive," she said. "Science has always come pretty easy to me. I zipped through Asimov's _Understanding Physics_ when I was ten and a couple of years later was going through college level textbooks."

"Physics? I thought your MS was in plant biology," Willow said.

Vi nodded, "Yup. But it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to specialize in – invasive species, by the way, and how to stop them – so before that I read up on a lot of different sciences."

"I get that," Willow said. "I'm a fan of most of them myself but I haven't been able to keep up with much of it; heck, even my hacking abilities kind of fell by the wayside for a while, though after I went off the rails I decided I needed to, you know, get my act back together so I wasn't just defining myself by my magic anymore." Then she chuckled. "Invasive species? So kind of what you're doing as a Slayer?"

Vi laughed and then said, "Yup. But the Scythe's not as much good for dealing with an ailanthus or wavyleaf basketgrass as it is for vampires."

"You'd think with the name that it _would_ be good for killing plants."

"There is that."

They drove in silence before Willow said, "I think we're only about a half hour away. Are you ready?"

"Ready, willing, and eager," Vi said, her voice matching her words maybe a little too closely.

"You do remember that the main reason we're coming here is to try to track down Beverly Barlowe, right? Not actually do research. No matter how fun that might be."

Sighing, Vi said, "I know. But is it okay for me to hope I at least get to look at all the cool toys before we go?"

"Of course it is," Willow said. "But Buffy and Dawn, while they haven't gotten any worse, haven't gotten any better either, and the witches aren't having any more luck than I have figuring out a way to fix it manually that won't be worse than the disease."

"Point taken," Vi said, her normal effervescent disposition decidedly subdued.

"Don't be _too _gloomy," Willow said. "One, we're supposed to be excited about starting, and two, there's nothing saying we have to figure this out and then slink out of town in the dead of night."

That cheered Vi back up. Good.

X X X X X

After a couple of days, Zane had finally gotten together every single thing he could figure out or deduce about the Scarlet Witch; it wasn't much, but it was more than they had. A lot of it dealt with semantics and styles of hacking, but he (and Fargo, who was taking the electronic invasion personally) had used every trick at their disposal to track the source of the hacking down to somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Jo also knew that, for some reason, she hadn't apparently been interested in anyone particular who worked for GD; they'd gone through the list of current and past employees dating back about ten years, then gone through the files again, looking for something or someone; they were still trying to figure out who. Jack was looking through those as well.

Much as she hated to admit it, Jack actually had picked something up through a friend of his in the FBI: Back in the day, the Scarlet Witch had been traced to Southern California, and had successfully hacked into various national databases that were supposed to be almost as well-protected as GD's servers were. Zane had told her the same things, but Zane, here, wasn't particularly trustworthy; he hero-worshipped this woman to some extent, and was willing to believe things that might not have necessarily been true.

Still, while this narrowed down the field considerably, there were still tens of thousands of people who fit the criteria "In Southern California five years ago, in the Mid-Atlantic now," and that was _after_ leaving aside those who were too young or not physically or mentally capable.

Things had been fairly quiet in Eureka for the last couple of days – and she realized that even thinking that probably doomed the town to an attack by genetically modified killer bees – so she and Jack (and Zane, who helped when he wasn't working on patching the security hole) had had plenty of time to work on figuring out who the attacker was.

Worst case is that it was someone working with Beverly Barlowe's group, trying to track down Senator Wen – or Beverly herself, who'd gotten good and lost. She'd be back, though; she had an unholy fascination with this place.

In the meantime, GD's two new scientists were joining them today in front of Cafe Diem in – Jo checked her watch – two minutes. She was waiting at one of the outdoor tables. Normally Fargo or at least Allison would do it, but Fargo was still focusing on the security leak and Allison was out of town at a medical conference. She just hoped the newcomers didn't expect her to speak science. Jo wasn't dumb, and what she didn't know about firearms nobody knew about firearms, but she understood the geekspeak about as well as Jack did.

Here came a car she didn't recognize, dragging a trailer behind it. It stopped about ten feet up and the woman in the passenger side got out. She had red hair and was about Jo's height, but built a lot less solidly. The other woman went to park the car while the one who got out started to look around. Jo waved her hand and the woman came over.

"You don't look like Douglas Fargo," the woman said. "But if you are, that's either some disguise or some surgery."

"No, unfortunately, he was busy today. I'm Jo Lupo, Global Dynamics' head of Security. And you are?"

"Willow Rosenberg," she said. Ah. The computer scientist. Which made the one parking the car Violet Fisher, the plant biologist. They shook hands. "So, you need us to prove who we are or something? I think I had to sign more papers to come here than there are pages in the Baltimore phone book."

"Did you understand them?"

"Yup. Basically, if I talk about what goes in here in anything but vague terms to anyone who doesn't have clearance, and if I give away state secrets, I'll be dragged out to a field and disintegrated."

Jo repressed a chuckle. "Close enough."

Down the street, Fisher had parked the car and was getting out. "So, before I take you over to GD, do you want something to eat?"

"That's a big yep. We haven't eaten since breakfast this morning and the last of our trip food ran out a few hours back, and trust me, a hungry Vi is not someone you want to cross."

"As long as she doesn't try to destroy the town, I think we're good," Jo said.

Rosenberg was pointing to the cafe. Down the street, Ms. Fisher, whose face Jo still couldn't see clearly, was getting something out of the back seat; what, Jo couldn't tell, but she waved and said, "See you there in a minute!"

So Jo and Rosenberg went in. Jack was sitting at the counter chowing down on a burger, but he stood up when Jo entered. "This one of the new ones?"

"Yes. Willow Rosenberg, this is Sheriff Jack Carter. Carter, Willow Rosenberg."

They shook hands. "Nice to meet you. Grab a seat."

"Same back atcha. Vi's parking the car."

"Vi – Oh! Violet Fisher?"

"That's the one," Rosenberg said.

Right then Vincent came up and said to her, "Hi. Welcome to Cafe Diem. I'm Vince. What can I get you?"

Jack said, "Don't worry about a menu. Vince can fix – holy shit."

He was looking at the door. Jo turned, and there, standing in the doorway, was Holly Martin.

Rosenberg said, a bit confused, "Vi. Over here."

"Vi?" Jo said.

"Vi?" Vince echoed.

And Jack said, "That can't be good."


	4. Prelude to a Strangulation

Author's Note: The story breaks off of main Eureka continuity sometime after episode 4 of season 5. Henry's wife Grace has still left town, and for the same reasons, but Holly Martin did not survive in the Matrix and Dr. Hughes hasn't come to town yet.

X X X X X

Willow said, "Vi, over here," while trying to figure out why half the people in the room were gaping at Vi as though she were a talking sasquatch. When the Sheriff said, "That can't be good" as a visibly confused Vi walked towards them, she turned in her seat and said, "Why can't that be good, Sheriff?"

"Um," the sheriff said, "How sure are you that her name is Violet Fisher?"

"Since I've known her for about three years, reasonably sure," Willow said. "What the hell is going on here?"

She looked first at the Sheriff, who seemed to be scrambling for something to say, then Vincent, who was simply staring slack-jawed, and finally to Jo Lupo, who was about to open her mouth when Vi said, "Okay, folks, I know I'm good-looking, but I'm not that good-looking," in an obvious attempt to lighten the weird,dark mood that had suddenly fallen over everyone. It failed.

This was not exactly the way she and Vi had wanted to enter Eureka. Not that they were expecting to sneak in or anything, but they had kind of hoped they could keep things low-key. As things stood, not so much.

Right then, someone else in a police uniform entered the Cafe. He walked over to Vi and Willow and said, with a cheeriness that definitely didn't belong in the room, "You must be Willow Rosenberg and Violet Fisher. Hi there. I'm Deputy Andy. Nice to meet you."

They shook his hands bemusedly as the sheriff said, "Andy? Is there something you forgot to tell me about our new employees?"

"You mean that one of them bears a striking resemblance to Holly Martin? Actually, Boss, I've tried to tell you that five times over the last couple of days and every time you told me it wasn't important." Vi's head jerked when Andy said the name Holly Martin.

Jo Lupo said, "What?" while glaring at the sheriff.

The sheriff responded with a, "Well, how was I supposed to know it was this level of important?"

"Actually, Boss -" Andy began.

"Andy, that was a rhetorical question."

The deputy nodded and said, "Right. I'll file that away," in the same amiable tone of voice.

"Andy?" Willow asked the deputy, because he was the only one in the building who seemed capable of rational thought.

"Yes, Ms. Rosenberg?" Andy said.

"Why does this bother everyone, that Vi looks like this Holly Martin?"

"Everyone liked her and she was killed a couple of weeks ago," he said.

"Killed?" Vi said angrily. Vi very rarely got angry. "Give me a second." She retreated about ten feet, took out her cell phone, and began dialing.

"And," the Sheriff said, "It's not a resemblance so much as it is that they're identical twins. Except that Ms. Fisher over there looks maybe ten years younger than Holly."

"Eleven years, one month, and three days," Andy said.

"Thank you, Andy," the sheriff said.

"Anytime, Boss." There was something – off – about Andy, Vi hadn't noticed anything, but her Slayer sense was about on a par with Buffy's – she'd notice something if she concentrated, but not if she wasn't. He certainly didn't seem remotely threatening, but then the Mayor had been pretty good at being pleasant while being, you know, not.

In the meantime, Willow's only two experiences with dopplegangers had involved her evil vampire self and Xander's split into his best and worst qualities personified. Neither one seemed to match the current situation; Vi was certainly the approximate level of magic as any Slayer. Though where they were, maybe clone or robot was more likely.

Robot? She checked – yup. Andy was a robot. Though he seemed to have some kind of soul, if Willow was reading his aura correctly. Aura reading, never really her strong suit, but having a soul meant he was somewhat less likely to be a bad guy.

Somewhat. After all, Maggie Walsh had had a soul. Allegedly.

"Andy," the sheriff said. "While we're trying to figure out what's going on, I want you to make sure that Fargo doesn't come anywhere near this building. This is going to be hard enough on him as it is."

The deputy nodded, said, "Will do, Boss," and walked out the front door.

Standing up, the sheriff said, "Attention, everyone. No one – and I mean _no one_ – says anything about one of our guests looking like Holly Martin. Anyone does, and . . . Jo, help me out here."

But it was Vincent who spoke. "Anyone does, and they're banned from Cafe Diem for life."

"Thanks, Vince."

"While we try to figure out what's going on here," Jo said, "Why don't you order?"

The proprietor stood in front of Willow and said, "Yes?" a bit nervously.

"The sheriff said no menus?"

"That's right," he said with building confidence. "Ask for anything."

"Okay," Willow said. "I'll take a grilled portobello sandwich with grilled onions and swiss cheese on a kaiser roll, a side of steamed broccoli with butter, and . . . a bottle of Moxie."

"Moxie? Haven't gotten any orders for that in a long time." He clapped his hands. "Good. I love a challenge. And for – um, her?" he said, pointing to Vi.

Looking over at the sheriff's plate, Willow said, "What the sheriff had to start off with, plus a glass of water. She'll tell you more when she gets over here."

"Will do," Vincent said, and went into the kitchen.

In the meantime, Vi said, "You still should have told me," and shut her phone so hard Willow was afraid she'd break it. Then she stormed over and sat down.

"What was that about?" the sheriff asked.

"Willow, remember when I told you that scientific genius seemed to run in my family?" Willow nodded. "Holly Martin is – _was _- my aunt. She was my mother's youngest sister. Somehow no one else in my family bothered to tell me that she'd been killed. They each thought someone else had done it, which is why I wasn't at the family funeral three days ago." She closed her eyes, slowly breathed in and out, and said, "What happened?"

Jo and the sheriff looked at each other awkwardly. "It's classified," Jo finally said.

"So all those papers we signed?" Willow asked.

"Those just get you in the front door," Jo said. "To know exactly what happened to your aunt, you'll need another level of clearance entirely."

"We can tell you she was murdered, though," the sheriff said.

"Murdered?" Vi said faintly.

"Yes. She was killed during a . . . scientific experiment."

"Do you know who did it?" Vi said.

"We do," Jo said. "But who did it, that's one of the things that classified."

Vi nodded. "Okay. Then let's get going."

"Vi?" Willow said. "The answer'll be the same in a half hour and not fifteen minutes ago you were complaining about how hungry you were."

"You think I want to eat now?" Wow. Willow had never seen Vi this furious.

"I think you need to eat now," was Willow's answer. "And we didn't come here for vengeance. Remember?"

Vi opened her mouth, closed it, and said, "Yeah. You're right," and came over and sat down. A couple of minutes later, Vincent came back out of the kitchen, placing a cheeseburger and fries in front of Vi, and Willow's grilled portobello sandwich in front of her, finishing off by handing her, with a flourish, a glass bottle of Moxie. "And here you are," he said.

Despite the situation, Willow smiled slightly. "Well done," she said admiringly.

"I hate disappointing my customers," he said, smiling back, and then moved to the other end of the counter.

The sheriff said, "Before we go over there, we need to figure out how we're going to handle Fargo." When Willow shot him a quizzical look, he said, "He and Holly were dating. He took her death very hard."

"Believe me, I get that," Willow said. "Having one of your loved ones murdered can make you, you know, act completely differently from how you normally do." Now it was the sheriff's turn to shoot her a questioning look. "My girlfriend. Tara. Shot in front of me. They never caught the person who did it." At least, that was the official record. "He didn't go on a rampage of revenge or anything, did he?"

"Fargo? I'm not sure he'd even know how. But he was, and is, very upset," Jo said. "So Ms. Fisher's appearance would definitely shock him, and that's not what he needs right now."

"Got it," she said.

Vi hadn't said anything since she started eating. Damn. Not like this mission needed to get any more complicated.

Not like she wasn't going to give Vi a lot of room to grieve and rage, either. Willow didn't know how close Vi was to her aunt, but close enough to get angrier than she'd seen her in three years, so unless she went off the rails, Willow was going to give her some space.

In the meantime, while Vi ate, it was up to Willow to exchange small talk with the sheriff and Jo. So, chat, for a few minutes anyway.

The people of Eureka seemed nice enough so far; their reaction had been unexpected, but in light of things was completely understandable.

She hoped things didn't get more complex, while completely understanding that they probably would. Sighing internally, she began to make contingency plans.

Still, she suspected she wouldn't be able to drag Vi out of here now before something was done about her aunt's murderer, as well.

X X X X X

Douglas Fargo knew something was up. He might not have been the most socially perceptive person in the time zone, but even he could notice people whispering and hurrying away when he drew near. He went into the bathroom to see if Dr. Parrish had sprayed some kind of monophagous fluid that would chemically change the genetically altered wool used to make his suits in a pattern that would read "kick me" from a distance, but there was no evidence of that.

He'd just finished a conversation with General Mansfield about their progress on the kinetic retardant field projector (although Sheriff Carter would no doubt call it a slow-motion gun, which was a pretty cool name now that he thought about it) and was walking through GD's main rotunda when he noticed the commotion.

Wheeling around, Fargo headed back to his office where his lackey/secretary/rival from their original timeline Larry was sitting at his desk. "Larry," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Fargo?" Larry said, jumping to his feet.

"Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Whatever do you mean?" Yes, he knew something, all right.

"Everyone's acting like I have something taped to my back. If you know what it is, _spill_."

Right then the phone rang. Larry hastily picked up and said, "He's right here, ma'am," and then, to Fargo, he said, "It's Head of Security Lupo. I'll transfer it to your office."

"This isn't over," he snarled as he went into his office and picked up the phone.

"Fargo?" Jo said.

"Jo, do you have any idea why people are whispering and pointing at me?"

A sigh of exasperation came from the other end of the phone. "I'll strangle whoever blabbed," Jo muttered.

"So you do know."

"Yes, Fargo, I know. It's about our two new employees."

"Ms. Rosenberg and Ms. Fisher? What about them?" Fargo had gone over their records and, while a bit spotty, they both seemed eminently qualified.

"Did you ever look at their photos?"

"No, actually. Why?"

"Fargo," Jo said. "Open up the file for Violet Fisher and look at her picture."

Fargo did so –

and then his mind went blank for a while.


	5. Weedkiller

"Fargo? Fargo? Damn!" Jo Lupo said. "I think he fainted."

"Well, why'd you tell him?" Jack asked. "I thought we were going to play this cool."

"Apparently, people were acting weird around him."

"And that's different how?"

"This time, he noticed. I didn't have time to think of a good lie and he didn't sound like he was interested in another stall." She turned to Ms. Fisher and Ms. Rosenberg. "Under the circumstances, and I know how much you want to learn who killed your aunt, Ms. Fisher -"

"Vi," she said.

"Vi," Jo continued, "but I think for the moment we're going to have to postpone your introduction. Carter, could you get them to wherever it is they're staying?"

When Vi began to protest, Ms. Rosenberg said, "They're right. We can settle in and get a fresh start tomorrow." The tome was firm and somewhat commanding; it wasn't the tone of someone used to being in charge, but someone who's had to tell other people enough is enough way too often. Jack heard that tone in his own voice but he hadn't quite mastered it yet; that Willow Rosenberg had said something about her.

Vi accepted this, though not happily. "Yeah. Okay. I guess I could use a cool-down period. I'll be at the car." She walked out of Cafe Diem.

Jo said, "Carter, I'll keep you updated. Rosenberg -"

"Willow," Ms. Rosenberg said firmly.

Jo nodded. "Willow, what you said works. Plan on tomorrow. I'll meet you here at 7:30."

As Jo left, Jack said, "So. Where're you ladies staying?"

X X X X X

As Jo got into her car, she tried calling Zane and asking him to go check on Fargo, but he wasn't picking up. Larry would be useless; the only thing he was really good at was kissing Fargo's ass.

Then a thought occurred to her. Well, at least this guy wouldn't hold back from doing what it took to wake Fargo up. She made the call.

X X X X X

One of the benefits of working in Eureka was your dwelling place, whether you chose a house, an apartment, a trailer, or a tent in the woods. Their house was on Volta Way a couple of miles away from Main Street; it was a small two-bedroom ranch, maybe 1300 square feet.

The Sheriff showed them the security features ("Trust me," he said, "You don't want to forget about how to activate these things. The first time you find yourself hanging twenty feet in the air or covered in some kind of quick-hardening foam – not that I'm speaking from experience or anything -) and asked if there was anything else he could do, if they needed any help unloading.

"We're good," Willow said.

Looking at the trailer, he said, "You sure?" He didn't sound patronizing, just concerned.

Willow said, "Yup. Right now, we have a lot of energy and moving in'll take some of that off, and you know, right now, we need that."

The sheriff said, "Okay. You've got my number; call if you need anything."

Smiling slightly, Willow said, "So the job of sheriff in Eureka includes "Welcome Wagon."

Shaking his head in mild exasperation, though clearly not directed at them, the sheriff said, "And plumber, and lab rat, and repairman, and . . ." and retreated to his SUV.

After he left, Willow said, "Okay. This furniture isn't going to be moving itself in."

After a second, she added, "It'll be unpacking itself, but that's a different story. Chop-chop."

Vi, who hadn't said anything the whole way over, responded by simply opening the trailer and taking three boxes. Willow grabbed her laptop from the back seat.

X X X X X

An hour and a half later, they were done. They hadn't packed a whole lot, and very little that would be missed if they had to run for it in the middle of the night. (Vi's weapons – they weren't assuming anyplace was supernatural-free – some of Willow's books, and her laptop. Everything else was second-hand or they had duplicates.)

So the place looked pretty Spartan once they'd gotten everything inside. Then, while Vi was still outside – she still hadn't said much beyond "coming through" or "could you get the door" – Willow sprinkled some powder on the floor and said, "Colocá –lo fora!"

The boxes and bags opened and books, clothes, DVDs and toiletries began moving around the house to their proper places. Pictures hung themselves on the wall. Clock radios moved to tables and plugged in. Weapons moved to Vi's room, except for a handful of stakes, which went to Willow's.

Within three minutes, everything was where it belonged, and Willow told Vi she could come in. "And now, missy," she said. "We need to talk." This with mild resolve face. She was much concerned about Vi as about the mission, at this point. Vi was bubbly and cheerful; even dealing the monsters she dealt with on a near-daily basis hadn't diminished this all that much.

Vi said, "Yeah, I guess you're right." They sat down on the stools at the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the main room. "We came here to help Buffy and Dawn. Not to do the cool science, and not to get the person who murdered Aunt Holly."

But Willow was shaking her head. "No. I'm not going to ask you to keep all of that bottled up. The cool science, cool as I think it'll be, is definitely on the back burner, but your aunt's death? There's sucking it up, and there's sucking it up, and believe you me, I know from experience what long-term repression of your feelings can do, and it's not pretty, not by any stretch of the imagination. So do what you have to to work it out, short of exposing us or going completely off the rails. If that means trying to track down her killer, by all means, do so."

"So, 1 and 1a, for finding Beverly Barlowe and finding Aunt Holly's killer? Cool. I can work with that." Then she began to cry. "I just would have liked to be there to say goodbye, you know?"

"I know," Willow said. "Believe me, I know."

Vi stood up "I'm going to go exercise for a bit."

Willow nodded. "Good. That gives me some time to set up my computer." With any luck, it would be easier hacking from the outside than from the inside.

She would also cheat. Her pride might demand she try to do so unaided, but her pride would be put on hold.

X X X X X

The next thing Douglas Fargo was conscious of was water being thrown in his face. "You're fired!" he sputtered –

"I know you've been waiting for the chance, Fargo, but I think you've got bigger things to worry about."

"Parrish?" Fargo said.

"Good. You can still see."

"Why would _you_" – the "of all people" was heavily implied, if unspoken – "wake me up?"

"Lupo's not here yet and no one else here has the guts," Parrish said. "Relax. I wasn't being malicious." He sounded almost concerned. The closest Parrish had ever been to concerned was when he'd role-played with him for several hours to commiserate over Holly's –

"Holly!" he said, hitting the space bar to remove his screen saver.

"That's not Holly," Parrish said.

"But – could she be a robot? A clone? Someone using a device that copies someone else's DNA and uses it to transform themselves into a copy of that person?"

Scornfully, Parrish said, "Really? That's what you come up with?" Right; the incident where Julia had switched bodies with Jo never happened in this universe, because Julia had gotten married to an astronaut, and no one else had gone down that road. "Try 'none of the above.' Look." He pointed at the screen. "The date of birth is off; there's an entire history there. Holly was Violet Fisher's aunt."

"Madelyne Pryor had an entire history, too, and she was nothing but a clone of Jean Grey."

"Really? Who, nineteen years ago, would have been playing Mister Sinister?"

Fargo glared at him. "Get off it, Dougie," Parrish said. "I didn't like you but I'm a long way from _that_ level of malevolence. How Machiavellian do you think I am?"

True. Fargo wasn't thinking clearly. If Parrish had pulled something like this off he'd have been bragging about it a long time ago. "And you liked Holly too."

"I did," he said. "So, do we have to worry about you going catatonic again any time soon?"

"No."

"Too bad. Maybe it would have brought some new blood into this place."

"Then why'd you wake me up?"

Parrish shook his head as he began walking out. "I don't know. What was I thinking? I need to have my head examined."

"We have the most advanced scanning technology in the world in our medical labs," Fargo shouted after him. "They _still_ wouldn't be able to find anything."

"You're welcome," Parrish said, and left.

So. Violet Fisher. It still wouldn't be a whole lot of fun meeting her. Though she seemed eminently qualified.

But he probably wouldn't faint again.

Better have Jo next to him, just to be sure.

X X X X X

That night, Vi ran through the forest on the outskirts of town. She'd looked for graveyards and only found one, with no sign anyone or anything was living there much larger than a gray fox. No signs of disturbed earth, nothing that hinted at a vampire population, and she'd checked the local news for any mysterious deaths, and while there were some, not a single one sounded in any way supernatural.

So, with a lack of anything to fight, she was trying to work off both her Slayer-inspired energy and her anger at her aunt's death by doing a quick ten-mile jog through the forest. Alas, the forest wasn't showing signs of anything too troublesome, either. She'd noticed a couple of minor nature spirits and the signs of something moving in the distance, but nothing more worrying than a stand of giant hogweed by the edge near the road.

While she wasn't Vi the Weed Slayer, she still spent a satisfying few minutes ripping them out of the ground (after putting on a pair of gloves; hogweed sap could badly inflame the skin if you weren't careful_. _She'd need to thank Buffy for drilling into them that a pair of gloves was always handy; there were times Slayers didn't want to leave prints.)

The gloves would be useless afterwards, but getting rid of giant hogweed before it had a chance to spread was always a bonus and certainly worth the loss of a cheap pair of gloves.

While she'd worked off some of her edge, her anger wasn't going anywhere. Probably silly of her to expect it would. Still, at least she wouldn't bite anyone's head off. Tomorrow night she'd do her part towards finding Beverly Barlowe. Willow's job was to dig through computer records; Vi's was to track down any physical evidence.

She looked up at where she was – it was maybe a four-mile jog back to their house at this point. She'd been out for a couple of hours. Might as well call it a night.

As she turned around, she was startled; there was a man standing about ten feet away. In the dim light, she could make out that he was around a foot taller than she was, and was wearing something on his face. "Hello there," he said cheerfully, with an accent that sounded almost fake. "Saw you ripping' out the giant hogweed. Nasty buggers, they are. Hate to see 'em spread around here and do damage to the ecosystem." He took a step closer and Vi could see he was wearing night vision goggles. "Don't think we've met, but then, I don't get back to Eureka as often as I'd like. You new around these parts?"

She wasn't getting a danger vibe from him, but she still stayed a few feet away just in case. "Yes. I'm Vi Fisher. I was just hired as a plant biologist."

"Nice to meet you, Vi. My friends call me Taggart. So tell me: What were you hunting?"


	6. Hunters and Trackers

"Hunting? I wasn't hunting," Vi said. "Why would you think I was hunting?"

"Ms. Fisher, you're talking to a wilderness specialist here. I recognize someone going for a hunt when I see one, and I don't think you were stalking the wily giant hogweed. Dangerous buggers they may be, but they're not much on motion. And you've got weapons on you – a sweet, nasty knife, and a couple of stakes also."  
"How could you see -?"

Taggart tapped his goggles. "Not your ordinary night vision here. I can see now like it was bright as noon in the middle of the Outback. Those bulges in your pants are a dead giveaway. Now, you're not really dressed for wild animal hunting – and if I'd thought you were trying to kill any of the native wildlife I'd have stopped you – and you weren't looking for the hogweed, but you were clearly trying to find something. It's not a lost person because the Sheriff would be here along with the lovely Ms. Lupo and a team from GD. So, it's not a person, it's not animals, and it's not plants. So, what was it?"

This guy was smarter than he sounded. Of course, this was Eureka, so relying on Sunnydale levels of ignorance was a very bad idea. She had to remind Willow, if Willow hadn't picked up on it already, that they needed to be quadruply careful. Everyone around here, with the possible exceptions of the Sheriff and Jo Lupo, was as smart as they were, or smarter.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said.

"You'll find I believe in all kinds of things the people around here are skeptical of," Taggart said. "Why, one year I set a trap for Santa Claus. But he's a crafty one, he is; escaped every time."

From what Vi'd been told, catching Santa might not be such a good thing, given his child-eating rep, but that really wasn't the issue at the moment. So she turned the question back on Taggart. "What do you think I was hunting for?"

"Well, you've got two stakes, a knife, you're wearing a cross, and if I'm not mistaken those are bottles of holy water in your little handbag. So I'm thinking you're looking for," and he took a step forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Vampires."

Vi knew when she was beaten. "You up for a jog back to town, Mr. Taggart?"

"Naah. Truck's back that way a quarter mile. I couldn't keep up with you. You're in phenomenal shape. All I could do to keep up with you."

There was nothing sleazoid about his tone, so she simply said. "Thank you. We're at 314 Volta Way. See you there in an hour."

"Make it an hour and a half. You're gonna need time to cool down after that long run."

"An hour'll be fine, Mr. Taggart."

X X X X X

"Huh," Zane said. He'd been working on fixing the computer hole for the better part of a week now, with occasional assistance (and more than occasional looking over the shoulder) from Fargo, who was still determined not to allow the Scarlet Witch's suggestions to be used, despite the fact that, on his time no less, he'd figured out that it would have worked perfectly.

When he tried suggesting this to Fargo, though, he was very nearly thrown bodily out of the office – by Fargo himself, no less.

Last time he came up for air, around dinnertime, he found out what pretty much everyone else in Eureka already knew – that one of the new people coming in, Violet Fisher was practically a dead ringer for Holly Marten. A little less of a coincidence, since Holly was the younger woman's aunt, but still, the resemblance was spooky. Way he'd heard it, Fargo'd practically gone catatonic when he saw Violet Fisher's face, and Isaac Parrish, at great personal peril to himself (well, this he heard from Parrish himself, so he doubted that part of it, anyway) had had to dump water over his head to snap him out of it. Now that, he believed; there were a hundred different ways to snap someone out of a fugue state like that, and Parrish went for one of the ones that would fluster and embarrass Fargo.

Still, while it had left Fargo capable of functioning, it had done absolutely nothing for his mood, but Zane wasn't taking it particularly personally. This would throw anyone.

Well, except Deputy Andy, apparently.

Anyway, it seemed that his favorite Witch was back. This time, instead of actively fighting back, Zane decided to adopt a passive approach – give her enough rope, while still making sure the project files were well and truly sealed, and ready to isolate them with the press of a button, if necessary. The button would sever all physical connections between those databanks and the outside, as well as make a Wi-Fi suppression field appear. The only way to get GD's data then would have been the way Beverly Barlowe had done it: By means of invasion.

"So, let's see what you're after this time," he said. In the meantime, he once again started the tracing program, although this time he made sure it was on stealth mode – a little tweak he'd added himself. If the Scarlet Witch checked to see if she was being traced or even watched, the program was now designed to reflect that no one had noticed and that everything was copacetic.

After about five minutes of poking and prodding around the personnel records again, she moved on to the medical records.

Okay, now things were getting interesting. The direct trace was bouncing all over the western hemisphere, from Baltimore to Sao Paulo to Fresno and half a dozen other cities, but these were ghosts, and she could have had a program that would keep it bouncing for a long time. GD didn't rely on just the direct approach, though. A more subtle method had managed to pin her down to somewhere in the Pacific northwest. The longer she stayed on, the more they'd narrow it down.

Wait, medical records? Shit. Letting her pry into an area she'd already cracked open was one thing, but this was something else. he instituted a slowdown measure – a sophisticated anti-virus check, to outside appearances. If he kept her on long enough, he'd be able to track her down to the building.

He didn't. A minute later, a chat box popped up saying, "You're good."

"Thanks," he typed back. "Wanna get together and swap stories?"

"Nice try. Hey, how come you haven't put in the security patch I recommended?"

"My boss won't let me," Zane typed. "He's ticked that you even got in at all."

"It is kind of like hacking into the Fortress of Solitude." A second later, she added, "Also, nice tracking program. Very subtle. Almost missed it."

He looked up and suddenly the program was showing the Witch being somewhere in Guam. When he looked back, she was gone.

Zane _knew_ she wasn't in Guam. Right before she'd started chatting, she'd been pinned as being somewhere in Oregon.

Okay. SoCal ten years ago to the Mid-Atlantic three days ago to Oregon today. That had to narrow the number of people down considerably.

He hadn't a challenge like this in years. _Damn_, this was fun!

X X X X X

As Willow ended the call from Vi and finished her chat with GD's hacker, she cursed herself (non-magically) for forgetting to completely factor in Eureka being a town of geniuses. She could only hope that this Taggart, who seemed amiable enough according to Vi, would be satisfied with a partial explanation and believe it complete.

In the meantime, now done tonight's search, she denuded her laptop of any trace of what she'd been doing that evening. She was right that it had been easier to hack Eureka from the inside than the outside, but that was like saying it was easier to fight Spider-Man than the Hulk.

Still, she'd confirmed what she suspected going in: Beverly Barlowe was not in Eureka, though she had been recently – she was part of a group that hijacked a manned mission to Titan – _Titan_! Willow had to say, their security, pretty darn good, because she'd had no clue, and she kept an eye out for science news.

Vi's aunt had been on that trip. Vi's aunt hadn't returned from that trip. And the person responsible for the hijacking, if the internal memos she was seeing weren't just wild speculation, was Senator Alice Wen herself.

No wonder she'd disappeared. Willow would have too, if she had an entire town of supergeniuses mad at her.

The more she learned about Beverly Barlowe, the less she liked the woman. Giles had been dead right when he'd called "not violent" pretty thin gruel. Still, she seemed to be doing her treason for some mysterious cause, not just for the money, the power, or the hell of it. Somewhere in there was a conscience.

Willow had to find it. But first, they had to find _her_. Willow's peek through some of Barlowe's patients' medical files had shown her to be a manipulative person who nonetheless did right by her patients as long as she didn't have any higher purpose in mind. She'd screwed around with the heads of four of the 21 people she'd checked.

On the surface, it would be stupid for Beverly Barlowe to be anywhere within a thousand miles of Eureka. Heck, it would be dumb for even to be in the same dimension. But, seeing how she'd already come back here at least three times since her double-dealing was discovered a few years back, it was a lot more likely that she was hanging around somewhere nearby, waiting for her next chance to advance her nebulous cause, whatever it was.

So here would be a good place to start. She'd formerly run the boarding house used for temporary visitors, so that would be where Vi would start tomorrow night.

Right now, though, there was Taggart to deal with. At least it sounded like he wouldn't be difficult to convince.

X X X X X

"Sheriff Carter," came SARAH's voice, "There is a phone call for you."

Jack Carter opened his eyes, looked at the clock, and said, "For pete's sake, SARAH, it's 1:45 in the morning!"

"I am aware of the time, Sheriff Carter," SARAH said with a slight miffed town in her voice. "And it is in fact 1:47 AM and 27 second. I would not have awakened you but Mr. Donovan said it was important."

Realizing that he was fighting a losing battle – which is pretty much the only kind he ever fought with SARAH – he said, "Okay.' Living in a smart house had a downside, occasionally.

Zane said, "Sorry about waking you, Carter, but -"

"Zane," Jack said, "This is the middle of the night. Get the point so I can either yell at you and go back to sleep, or run over to help fix whatever's about to explode, blow away, or kill us all."

"Okay," Zane said. "We had another visit from the Scarlet Witch tonight. And she's apparently here in Oregon."

"Good to know, but hardly 'wake the poor sheriff up in the middle of the night' type of stuff."

"Yeah?" Zane sounded almost offended. "Check this out, then. She spent some time going through the medical records. I think this violates a half dozen privacy laws, but take a look at them and see if you come to the same conclusion I did."

"Sheriff," SARAH said, "I have 21 medical records here."

"Black out the patients' names," Jack said.

"Of course, Sheriff." The records appeared on the TV screen; Jack had sacked out on the couch in the living room. Without Allie upstairs, the bed had seemed empty.

A few minutes later, Zane said, "So, do you see it?"

"I'm not a speedreader, Zane; it's going to take me a few minutes. SARAH, could you make me some coffee?"

"Certainly, Sheriff."

15 minutes later, Jack said, "They were all patients of Beverly Barlowe's at some point." While Beverly Barlowe hadn't been a GD employee, since she'd been caught out as a traitor her files had been moved to GD so that cleared medical personnel could look over them to see what kind of games she'd been playing with her patients.

"I reached the same conclusion 14 minutes and 33 seconds ago, Sheriff," SARAH said.

"Well, yippee for you," Jack said, sipping his coffee. "Zane?"

"Yeah, that's what I saw too. Now, call me crazy, but I have a theory here. The Scarlet Witch is going through GD personnel records and medical records and looking for people somehow connected to Beverly Barlowe. And wasn't she a redhead?"

"Yeah." After a second he said, "You don't think -"

"Yeah, I do. I think the Scarlet Witch _is_ Beverly Barlowe."


	7. Cross That Bridge

Willow and Vi had just gone through a brief version of Introduction to the Supernatural 101; when they were done, Taggart said, "That confirms quite a lot of the things I've seen. So, Vi, you're a plant biologist and a vampire slayer, then?"

"Yes," Vi said.

"You likely won't find much hunting around these parts, then, unless you continue to seek out the nefarious giant hogweed. If vampires are bothered by sunlight, then they'll fry any time someone turns on the shield." At Willow and Vi's puzzled looks, he said, "The EM shield?" When he still didn't get a response, he said, "What are they teaching at orientation these days?"

"We're new," Willow said, finally getting it, "And because the way Vi looks caused a minor crisis when we showed up we're not actually starting till tomorrow."

"Right. That explains it," he said. "I thought you looked like someone – related to Holly Marten?"

"She was my aunt," Vi confirmed.

A bit sadly, Taggart said, "I only met your aunt a couple of times but she seemed like a good woman. Bright as anything, too."

"Thank you."

"Anyway, where was I? Right, the EM shield. I'm not fully up on the hows and wherefores – I'm a biologist, not a physicist – but there's an EM shield over our town that's kind of a protector of last resort, you know, in case the missiles come flying in." To Willow's bemused look, he said, "It happens more often than you'd think."

"That's . . . disturbing," Willow said.

"Naaah," Taggart said jovially. "It's all part of the fun. What's life without a little danger? Oh, right. Anyway, the shield's main power generator is solar and for a while was leaking radiation like nobody's business whenever it was activated – people would get nasty sunburns just from being outside at the wrong time. They fixed that, of course, but it still generates a mite extra any time it's tested, day or night. Certainly enough to give take care of any vampires."

Willow wasn't sure she entirely bought this – there was plenty of underground here the way there was in Sunnydale – but it would explain why Vi hadn't seen even a hint that there were any vampires in town, and why there wasn't a single mysterious death that would fit the profile. (In fact, there weren't any mysterious deaths at all, technically. Admittedly, more people died around here from 'explosion of untended machinery' than most other places in the world, but that technically wasn't "mysterious.")

"That doesn't mean there won't be other beings causing problems," Vi said. "I did see a couple of nature spirits when I was running through the woods."

"Any of 'em do anything?" Taggart asked.

"Just waved, mostly," Vi said.

"I'd think that anything that would have caused trouble would have come to my attention by now," Taggart said.

"I thought you were an animal specialist," Willow said.

Taggart grinned. "Nature, supernature, close enough. Anyway, I'll be around here for a few more weeks; I'll let you know if I see anything and you can let me know if you need any kind of traps. All nonlethal, of course." He nodded. "Ladies," he said, and left the house.

"Well," Vi said after a few minutes. "That -"

"Could have been worse?" Willow said. "Yeah. A lot worse. Still, when you patrol again, you're going to need to be more careful. Wear exercise gear so if anyone asks you can just tell them you were out for a jog."

Vi nodded, "Yeah. Good idea." After a second, "So, what do you want me to do tomorrow?"

Willow began to explain what she'd found that evening.

X X X X X

Early the next morning – Jack having gotten very little sleep – he, Zane, Jo, Fargo and Henry Deacon were all gathered in Fargo's office. Zane explained what he'd dealt with the previous night.

"You let her invade GD's systems for a half hour?" Fargo said. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I'd give her enough rope that we could figure out who she is, where she's from, and what she's up to," Zane said. "She didn't go anywhere near the project files. I was ready to push the button if I had to."

"Yeah. Then he called me." He took over the story from there, ending in the deduction Zane had made. "And I know looking through medical records is a violation, so I took precautions and had SARAH black out the patients' names and anything else that could readily identify them."

"Beverly?" Henry said. "She's not a computer expert. She wasn't incapable of using one but I would hardly say she was anywhere near being a competent hacker. Certainly not world-class like this Scarlet Witch seems to be."

"Not like she's ever deceived us before," Jack said pointedly.

Zane brightened up a bit. "Thank God. Everyone else here seems to think this idea is on a par with phlogiston and Lamarckian evolution."

"Jack? You don't think Zane's right, do you?" Henry asked.

"No, actually," Jack said. Zane's face fell. "But I don't think it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard, either. At least it's worth looking into." After a second: "Lamarckian evolution?"

"I'll explain later, Jack," Henry said. Terrific. Jack knew he shouldn't have opened his mouth. "In any event, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to see if she does have the credentials."

"She _was _in Southern California six years ago, when the Scarlet Witch was still reportedly there," Jack said. "According to the records I could access, she was assisting in some military project, but that's where my security clearance ended."

"Okay," Jo said, "I'll look into it, see what the project was. I still don't think she's the hacker, but Zane's at least right that whoever it is is _interested_ in Beverly Barlowe for some reason."

Fargo nodded, "Okay. I see why you did it, then. But could you please not let it happen again? I think we have enough to go on." He looked around for support.

"At least for now," Jack confirmed.

"Good. Is the new improved firewall ready?" Fargo said.

"Yup," Zane said. "I'd like to see someone try to break in now. All it needs is your okay."

"And you didn't use anything from the Scarlet Witch?" Fargo asked suspiciously.

"You know as well as I do," Zane said, "That we couldn't completely avoid anything that resembled her ideas without tearing the entire thing down and starting over. But, per your instructions," he stressed sardonically, "I didn't consciously base any of it on her ideas."

"I'll look it over and you should have my okay within the hour," Fargo said. "Then, could you keep helping Sheriff Carter try to figure out who and where she is?"

"Of course," Zane said.

"Anything you need me to do there, Jack?" Henry said.

Thinking a second, Jack said, "Nothing directly. I could always use you for a little brainstorming, though."

"I'll be by after lunch."

Jack yawned, stood up and said, "That it for the moment, then?" Nods all around, and then he said, "Good. God, do you know how much I'm glad to be part of an actual old-fashioned investigation? Nothing about to explode, disintegrate, or attack, just a little sleuthing and logic?" He grinned.

Jo said, like she was humoring him, "I'm very happy for you, Carter. Fargo?"

"Hmmm?" He was already distracted by something on his computer.

"It's time to meet our new employees."

Fargo sighed. "Right. It's gonna happen eventually, it may as well be now. He stood up and sat back down. "I don't want to."

"Maybe not," Jo said. "But you need to. It is going to happen eventually. Violet Fisher's going to be around here for a while. You're going to have to cross that bridge."

"You'll be there?"

"Every step. Now, let's go."

X X X X X

Willow and Vi had a driver pick them up in the morning; the woman said, "Trust me. _Everyone_ gets a driver their first day." They saw why soon enough, when the car began barreling towards what looked like a collapsed bridge over a thousand-foot-deep gorge. Willow was about to say something when it her, and she had to restrain herself from bursting out laughing.

When Vi looked like she was going to open the window and dive out, Willow held her back. "Relax," she said.

"What?"

"Trust me. The driver's not a lunatic and -" they passed through an illusory wall and kept driving on the other side – "She doesn't have orders to murder us."

The driver said, "Damn. Well, at least I got one of you."

"What _was_ that?" Vi asked.

"Probably a hologram of some kind. Am I right?"

Laughing, the driver said, "Yeah. Probably fakes out 95 out of a hundred new employees. How'd you figure it out?"

"Logic," Willow said. "You didn't seem like a lunatic and, like I said, if we'd done something that would have made the people at GD want us dead there would have been a lot easier ways to kill us than by having someone Thelma-and-Louise us into a deep canyon."

"And if I had been?" the driver asked.

"Then I would have had about 15 seconds to learn how to fly," was Willow's answer.

The rest of the trip was unremarkable – though anything short of a massed attack by Fyarl demons would have been, after that. As they walked to the front of the building, Vi asked Willow, "Would you have been able to –?"

"Big with the hoping we never have to find out," was Willow's answer.

Jo Lupo was waiting for them at the front entrance. "Hey there," she said. "How was your trip?"

"Uneventful," Willow said.

Jo stopped in her tracks. "Really?" she said with an amused tone in her voice.

"Yeah," Willow said. "Oh – you mean that hologram thing? 'cause, you know, pretty impressive, but I did figure it out."

"I didn't," Vi said. "Just for the record. I was ready to dive out the window."

They walked through the front door. Jo said, "I heard you had an encounter with Taggart last night."

"Yeah," Vi said. "I was doing a late-night jog through the woods, stopped to rip out some giant hogweed, and he saw me and wondered what I was doing." Then she said, "You're not warning me about him or anything, are you?" Good catch on Vi's part.

"What? No! Taggart's one of the weirder people in a town full of them, but there's nothing there to warn you about. No, he mentioned your jog through the woods. You like to keep in shape?"

"I do," Vi said.

"Good. Not many of you scientist-types do. I was hoping you might want to run with me every once in a while – but we can talk about that later. Wait here." They were in what had to be the Rotunda, and spent a little time people-watching.

Two minutes later, Douglas Fargo came out, half leaning on Jo, half being dragged by her. He saw Vi and stiffened.

Well. This was going to be fun . . .


	8. Where is Senator Wen?

After she left Vi and Willow in the rotunda, Jo Lupo walked up to Fargo's office to get him. To his credit, he was standing at the doorway, ready to come down.

To his discredit, he didn't move when Jo said, "Okay, Fargo. They're here."

"Is that my phone ringing?" he said.

"No, Fargo. The phone isn't ringing, General Mansfield doesn't want a conference, and there's no rogue asteroid about to hit the town. You have no excuses. Come on."

Fargo took a step forward. Then another. Terrific. At this rate he'd be out to meet them by sometime in August. So she took him by the arm and half-dragged him forward. He didn't really resist.

A minute or so later, they were out in the Rotunda when Fargo suddenly straightened up.

Then he said, "Okay, Jo. You can let me go now."

Jo whispered, "If you run –"

He looked at her and said, "I'm not going to run."

She believed him, and let go, though she walked next to him until they were within about five feet of Vi and Willow. "Ms. Rosenberg," he said, and shook Willow's hand. "Welcome to Global Dynamics."

Willow said, "Thank you, Mr. Fargo. I've looked forward to coming here for a long time."

"Call me Fargo. Pretty much everyone does," he said. "Your specialty is computers, right?"

"That's me. I'm not going to go so far as to say I know everything, but it's not for lack of trying." After a second, she said, "And call me Willow."

"Good. Then I'm going to have you work with Mr. Donovan. We're having a security issue."

Willow flashed an odd smile. "I'd be happy to," she said.

Then Fargo turned to Vi Fisher. He took a deep breath and extended his right hand. "Ms. Fisher," he said. "It is good to meet you. Despite the circumstances."

As Vi shook his hand, she said, "Thank you. I swear, before I came here, I had no idea that Aunt Holly was working here – or even that someone had killed her. Trust me. I want to find who did it as much as you do. She was kind of my inspiration."

"I'd – like to talk to you about her," Fargo said.

"You sure?" Jo said.

"I'm sure. Jo, make sure Ms. Rosenberg and Ms. Fisher have the clearance necessary for me to tell them the truth, and meet me in my office as soon as you do." Then he nodded to both Vi and Willow, turned around, and walked swiftly up the stairs to his office.  
That could have gone a whole lot worse. In fact, apart from nearly having to carry Fargo out there, it was hard to imagine how it could have gone better.

"Security clearance?" Willow said.

"Right," Jo said. "Follow me."

X

What had he been thinking? Inviting her back here. He must have been out of his mind. Or something was malfunctioning –-

That was it. It had to be. Fargo didn't remember pressing any inappropriate buttons recently –

No. That wasn't it. He might have wanted that to be it, but it wasn't. Part of him was still holding out a wild, nay unscientific hope that Vi Fisher would turn out to be a clone, instead of merely a near-identical niece, but that was unrealistic, even for Eureka. Vi Fisher was not Madelyne Pryor or Holly Marten. She was simply what she appeared to be. No more, no less.

(He could hear Dr. Stark shaking his head in disappointment and saying, "Really, Fargo? I expected better out of you, I really did. If you think she's a clone or a robot, either try to prove it or quit whining and get over it.")

He distracted himself by going over the thoughts Zane had come up with for patching the security hole. In the mood to find something, even something practically infinitesimal, wrong so that he would have a reason for yelling at someone, he couldn't find so much as a metaphorical proton out of place.

Well, then. He'd have to channel it.

A few minutes later, while Fargo was going over some e-mail, there was a knock and Willow Rosenberg's head appeared around the corner. "Fargo?" she said. "I wasn't sure if you meant just Vi, or me and Vi, because Vi's my friend and I'd really like to know who killed her aunt too and I'd kind of not like to wait until tonight, if that's okay with you."

"That's fine," he said. "Come on in. Both of you." They both walked in and sat down. He actually hadn't planned on having Willow there, but he supposed it couldn't hurt, and besides, since she was friends with Vi anyway it would save the trouble of having to explain it twice.

Looking at the screen, he said, "First I need to tell you about Titan." He gave them a five-minute summary. When he was done Vi was sitting with wide eyes. "Wow. Titan," she said.

"Impressive," Willow said. "I pay close attention to the science news and didn't hear anything about it."

"It's good to know we managed to keep it secret from _someone_, then," Fargo said. "We never got to Titan. We never even left the atmosphere. Senator Wen was playing everyone the whole way. The Astraeus was hijacked remotely and landed fifty miles away on a supposedly abandoned airport outside of Salem. Then we were anesthetized with a fast-acting soporific gas and hooked up to a virtual reality simulation of Eureka where we were supposed to create inventions that Senator Wen and her people would then "invent" on the outside and make money on, hand over fist. And then – "His voice broke. No one could blame him, right? "Holly, inside the Matrix, figured out we were inside a simulation and – and." He took a deep breath. "Then Senator Wen killed her."

"What?" Vi said, shooting to her feet. "Where is she? I'm going to kill her."

Willow put her hand on Vi's. "No, you're not. That's not what we do. that's not what we're here for."

"And, anyway," Fargo said, finding his voice. "You're not because I'm going to do it. If we can ever find her."

"She was my aunt."

"_I loved her_!" Fargo shouted, bringing Larry into the room at a dead run. A glare from Fargo sent him scooting right back out without saying a word. Dr. Stark would have been proud.

Maybe not of the outburst.

"And she loved me," he finished quietly. "_Me_. Douglas Fargo." His relationship with Julia was in another universe and he'd never really gotten anything going with Claudia Donovan – the timing was always off.

"You shouldn't be competing," Willow said after a silence of maybe half a minute, "Over who gets to kil Senator no one can even find. Unless the disappearance is a cover story?"

"If it is," Fargo said, "It's one I don't know about." No one knew what had happened to Senator Wen. Or Beverly Barlowe, for that matter. "The thing is, even though people are looking for the Senator, she's got enough pull to get out of this."

"Trust me," Willow said. "Killing isn't the answer."

"Sometimes," Vi said, "It's the only answer."

"This isn't one of those times."

"We have to find her first," Fargo said. "We can figure out what to do when we've done that." Something told him it would be useless to try to throw his weight around with Willow Rosenberg – not that he really wanted to do that anyway. The him who'd been in this universe originally had been a tyrannical jerk, and Fargo was trying to make sure he didn't cross over the line between assertive and complete jackass.

"Huh," Willow said. "I wonder -"

"What do you wonder?" Fargo asked.

"You say Senator Wen has a lot of pull. Right?"

Nodding, Fargo said, "Yup. She never got tired of reminding us, either. Why?"

"If she has that much pull, why is she hiding? Because, you know, if I had enough influence to throw around to clear myself of multiple kidnapping charges and first-degree murder, I wouldn't be holed up on some South Seas island somewhere, I'd be using that influence and walking around free as a bird."

Fargo's eyes widened. That hadn't occurred to him. "She has the influence. I know that much."

"Well, then, the only thing I can think of is that she can't throw her weight around for some reason. Someone's already killed her or caught her and they're keeping it secret."

Almost to himself, Fargo said, "And it wouldn't be someone in the US government." Then it occurred to him. Of course. It had to be her. "Beverly," he said, spitting out the name like it was a curse.

Like, hell; it was a curse word. From what Jack and Henry had said, Beverly had been the one to brink news of Holly's death, and had let Jack go into the Matrix and bring them all out, but none of that changed the fact that it had been largely because of her that everyone had been kidnapped in the first place –

Because of her, Holly was dead.

"Beverly?" Vi asked.

Fargo looked up. "Beverly Barlowe. Used to be the official town psychiatrist until we found out she was screwing us over for fun and profit. If anyone has the Senator, it's her."

"So, find Beverly Barlowe, find the Senator," Vi said. "Get our rev – our nonlethal revenge," she stressed.

"Right," Fargo said. "Ms. Fisher –"

"Vi," Vi said.

"Vi," Fargo emended, "If you'd like to hear more about what your aunt was doing here, I'd be happy to tell you – but I think I've held you up from work long enough." He pressed a button on his desk. "Larry, get me Dr. Peterson and Zane Donovan, would you?"

Vi said, "If it would help you if I changed my appearance, I will."

For one wild minute, Fargo thought about saying yes; having someone who merely resembled a younger Holly, with dark hair (say) and glasses, (and what about plastic surgery?) probably wouldn't be as painful a reminder as Vi's presence would be. Still, it was unrealistic. It was a long-shot genetic lottery that Vi so closely resembled her aunt. "No, thanks," he said. "You're going to be here a while. This is who you are. And if I can accept it, no one else is going to have a problem, either."

"Thank you," Vi said.

A minute later, there was a page from Larry. "Mr. Fargo?" he said. "Dr. Peterson and Mr. Donovan are here."

"Send them in," Fargo said. When they arrived, Fargo stood up and Vi and Willow did likewise. "Dr. Peterson, this is Violet Fisher. She has an MS in plant biology with a specialty in invasive species." The two women shook hands." Zane -"

"Holy shit," Zane said.

"I thought you knew what she looked like," Fargo said, gritting his teeth.

"There's knowing, and there's knowing," Zane said. "Sorry about that, Ms. Fisher."

"It's Vi," she said. "And I understand. It's going to be happening for a while."

"Anyway, Zane," Fargo said, "This is Willow Rosenberg, MS in computer science and, from what I read in her records, a pretty talented hacker herself when she was younger. I'd like her to look over your plan for fixing the hole. Just to be on the safe side," he quickly added. "It looks pretty good to me."

If this bothered Zane, he didn't let it show, instead saying, "Okay. Sounds good. A new pair of eyes can't hurt." With a slight bow – where did he think he was, Camelot? – he said, "Willow? You can follow me."

As they walked out Zane said, "What have you heard about a hacker who calls herself the Scarlet Witch?"


	9. Security Systems

Inwardly, Willow was equal parts laughing her head off, and making plans to get the hell out of Eureka as fast as she could collect Vi and teleport. The funny was that it was her job to figure out a way to keep herself out. The "ready to bolt" was that it was going to be pretty damned hard to do a good job and both A, leave an actual hole for her still to exploit, and B, not leave evidence that she was herself the Scarlet Witch.

If Zane here was the one she'd been battling with/chatting with, then he was good enough to not be so easily fooled.

Fortunately, she did have one minor out. She'd used _two_ hacking aliases in her life (in case one got her caught, though neither ever did); so as far as everyone here was concerned, she'd gone by Mrs. H, and wouldn't that be embarrassing if she ever had to explain it to Xander, which she would just as soon as he finished the Oxnard story.

"The Scarlet Witch?" Willow said as they stepped into the elevator. "That's a big yes. She was what I always inspired to be."

"Don't be too modest, Mrs. H." Zane said. "You might not have cracked the Pentagon, but changing the prompters at CBS news to read in pig Latin was pretty good."

Willow laughed. That had actually been Xander's idea, the pig Latin. "Thanks. Too bad mean old Dan Rather had to be a spoilsport and actually pronounce every word exactly right."

"One of the man's finer moments. Anything else?" Willow mentioned a handful of things, all fairly well-known in the hacker community; nothing inaccurate, but nothing a thousand other people didn't know, either. "Longshot, I guess. She broke into GD systems a couple of times recently and we're trying to track her down."

Good to know; and if anyone could pull it off, Eureka could. She'd have to figure out a way to mislead them the next time she broke in.

The elevator came to a stop. "The computer section is all along this hallway," he said. "You might be working in any of these rooms – or on your own." They stopped in front of a door that looked thick enough the Hulk would have trouble pounding his way through it. Zane leaned forward to a device that emerged from the wall; as it scanned his eye he said "Zane Donovan." Then he turned to Willow and said, "Your turn."

Willow did the same, and then the door slid open. Inside was what the 16-year old her would have described as Heaven on Earth –

Hell, it wasn't that short of Heaven for the 24-year old her, either.

Zane was talking. "- Witch has hacked into GD's system twice in the last few days."

"Why?" Willow asked. If she was being given this opportunity, she might as well use it to see what they'd figured out about her alter ego.

But Zane wasn't playing that game. "Don't know," he said. "We're still working on that. But what she did the first time when she was done was she told us how to patch the security hole she'd snuck through. Fargo, though, wasn't interested in taking any advice from a criminal and ordered me to come up with a completely different way of closing the gap. Here's what I have."

As he gestured for Willow to take a seat, she thought that this, at least, confirmed what (presumably Zane himself) had told the Scarlet Witch last night. "Was there a problem with it, or something?"

"Nope. It was a good fix. It's taken me a couple of days to come up with another one that isn't clearly based on her ideas. That's what Fargo wants you to go over. It's in the file labeled 'Salem.' I'll be over here trying to track down anything else her earlier attempts might be able to tell me if you have any questions."

"If there's anything I can do with that, let me know."

He nodded. "I'll do that," as he sat down and started typing.

That was Willow's cue. She opened up 'Salem' – not a horrible joke, considering they were talking about a firewall for a witch, and she wasn't going to take offense because they had no idea she was a genuine witch (and under the circumstances she was hardly going to tell them) and began to examine Zane's program.

X

The rest of the morning passed by in something of a dizzy whirl for Vi; she'd been shown dozens of machines and experiments that were way beyond what she'd expected, even knowing something of Eureka's and GD's reputation. It let her suppress her anger at the bitch who'd killed her aunt, at least for a time.

It also gave her an excuse for openly finding out more about Beverly Barlowe. It wouldn't be particularly suspicious of her to be asking around about the woman who, at least indirectly, was responsible for Aunt Holly's death, even if the murder had bothered her and Senator Wen had actually done the deed.

About 11:30 Dr. Peterson finished the tour ("And this was only the highlights," she'd said) and told Vi to set up what she wanted to work on.

"Huh?" she asked.

"There'll be times when you have to work on a specific project, but one of the main benefits of working in Eureka is the chance to fine-tune exactly what you want to do. So, what do you want to do?"

An excellent question, which she was saved from answering when Jo Lupo came in and said, "Dr. Peterson? Can I borrow Ms. Fisher for a bit?"

"Just return her in the same condition you borrowed her in," Dr. Peterson said.

"I can't guarantee that, but I'll try," she said. As they got back on the elevator, Jo asked, "How's the first day going?"

"About half the people I've met have acted like I was an evil twin," Vi said. "And I have to plan out a project between now and the time we get back." It shouldn't be that hard; her mind was racing with a half dozen ways to take out giant hogweed already.

"I can think of a great way to get that mind de-stressing," Jo said, grinning."And you know what they say, sometimes the best ideas come to you when you stop thinking about the problem."

"And that way would be?"

The grin got even wider. "We run a few miles."

Not a bad idea – it would let her relieve all kinds of stress, briefly, but – "One problem. I don't have running clothes. And I think it was going to rain, anyway."

Jo's grin got even wider. "Who said we were going outside?"

X

GD's gym had high-tech workout gear available for employees who wanted to work out but had left their workout clothes at home that day. As Vi changed, Jo looked around. The gym was fairly busy during normal lunch hours – though the geniuses at GD were as likely to work through lunch as not, something she was still trying to wean Zane off of – but there were a couple of treadmills available.

When Vi came out of the dressing area, she called her over and said, "Okay. The goggles there? Put them on." When Vi didn't seem convinced, Jo said, "They're Virtual Reality – makes it more interesting. Instead of feeling like you're running on a treadmill, you can run a lot of different places, on road and off. You can make it easy, like a track, or hard, like a mountain road."

"What do you normally do?" Vi asked.

"My normal one's pretty tough." Not brag, just fact. Most of the people here couldn't handle it – too fast, too steep, too many obstacles. Carter's tried one day and knocked himself out before actually quitting; that had impressed Jo, a bit. Knowing when to quit wasn't really in Carter's vocabulary.

Vi smiled. "Bring it on."

"Your funeral," Jo said. Maybe Vi just liked a challenge; she did look like she was in good shape, but not like Jo was. Of course, the number of other women who could call themselves Army Rangers was around zero. Again. Not bragging.

Okay, maybe bragging a little. But if she couldn't brag to herself, who could she brag to?

They looked at each, put on the glasses. "Whoa," Vi said. "This –"

"Pretty cool, right?" Jo said. "Come on, we don't have all day!" And she took off along a virtual mountain trail – one that was used just often enough to keep it clear.

Vi caught up to her soon enough, and then, incredibly, passed her as they crested a hill. "Whose funeral?" she said as she began to pull ahead.

Oh, like hell. So far, Jo'd just been running hard. And she liked Vi, but there was no way she was going to let some – scientist – outrun her, no matter how good shape she was in.

Doubling her efforts as they rounded a curve at the bottom of a slope, Jo pushed herself back to where she was running even with Vi, who, annoyingly, didn't even seem to be putting forth much of an effort.

They kept pace with each other for a few minutes, not talking, and then Vi turned to her and said, "So, what can you tell me about Beverly Barlowe?"

X

Jo gave Vi a bit of info they didn't already have on Beverly Barlowe; Vi also managed to restrain herself during the rest of the run. Jo was probably in the best shape of any person she'd ever seen who wasn't a Slayer; Vi could have outpaced her, but she would have had to run Jo to the point of collapse to do it.

After the run, and a light lunch, Vi went back and told Dr. Peterson that she wanted to find away to eradicate the giant hogweed by accelerating its life cycle, so that it "matured" and flowered without producing seeds. Dr Peterson gave her the go-ahead, and she spent the rest of the day researching.

That night, after dinner at Cafe Diem and a war council at home, Vi headed over to Beverly Barlow's former boarding house.

The place had been given the once-over several times, by people ranging from Sheriff Carter to former head of GD Nathan Stark, to forensics teams so highly qualified that Abby Sciuto would have been told to get lost but a man named Henry Deacon had found something weeks after that, so it was entirely possible something was still hidden there.

Going through her physical possessions would have been easier, but they were either gone,with her, or locked up in a GD vault; and no matter how much they might have some reason to find about about the woman now, they weren't going to be able to talk their way in to see that. It would require some high-level magic to bypass GD's security systems, so Willow would have to handle that herself.

She could handle the lower-level break-ins like this one with only an assist from Willow. A necklace she was wearing would suppress any kind of security system and leave her transparent to any camera, but it wasn't powerful enough to bear up under the GD security they knew of, never mind the stuff that was hidden from the ordinary working stiffs like her and Willow.

Willow was busy devising a plan to get into the GD vault if they needed to, but that was the backup plan.

They were at least, now, convinced that Beverly Barlowe was still somewhere fairly close to Eureka. Willow had had the same thought she'd had, but Zane had never actually met the woman; some of the other computer lab people had, though, and pretty much confirmed what they'd already heard.

The boarding house was somewhere on the outskirts of Eureka, a run of a couple of miles from Volta Way. It was still sporadically occupied, run by the town, now, but at the moment no one was staying there.

When she was about a quarter of a mile away, she pressed the necklace and, keeping to the shadows, made it to the building, and climbed up the outside to a third-floor window. She spent twenty minutes going through the house, and found nothing that could be definitely linked to Beverly Barlowe, and she poked and prodded every inch of the rooms she'd inhabited (using gloves, of course). She swiped a doorknob from the woman's former bedroom, but that was a long shot.

Which probably meant they'd have to do it the hard way.

Honestly, should she have expected anything else ?


	10. A Malfunction on the Holodeck

To note once again: in this continuity, Holly is dead and the town has already had a memorial service for her. Why they'd wait so long is beyond me, anyway.

Having said that, I'm glad they figured out a way to keep her around in the actual show.

X

Douglas Fargo had tried to reach Vi Fisher that evening, but Willow Rosenberg had told him she was out exercising. Well, Jo had said that the young woman kept herself very fit; fit enough to hold her own with Jo on the virtual reality treadmill. Fargo had told her, "You've got to be kidding." Jo was in the best physical shape of anyone at GD – and that wasn't just the remnants of his former crush speaking, that was the official result of the biannual evaluations everyone had to do.

Jo'd responded, "Not only am I not kidding, I got the feeling she was holding back."

"That's weird. Maybe she was trying to be nice?"

"I told her she could cut loose and she said she was. She wasn't."

"Well, you are proud of being the most physically fit woman in Eureka; maybe she didn't want to challenge you?" A way she was different from Holly. Holly was in a lot better shape than Fargo'd been, but she was nowhere near being in Jo's league.

Jo'd snorted. "I only earn the right to be called that if I actually _am_. I'm proud of that, yeah, but not so proud that I want someone to dog it just to make me feel better. Tomorrow I'm going to get her to go all out. But – I need your help."

"What do you need?"

"Damn Zane for making me watch Next Generation, and if you tell anyone I know this phrase I'll deny it and then get Parrish to come up with a way to turn your clothes invisible, but I was thinking . . . a malfunction on the holodeck."

Fargo had smiled – not something he did very often these days – and said he'd be glad to help.

"She also asked me about Beverly."

"Probably because she thinks she's kind of responsible for getting Holly killed. Don't worry about it. I don't think there's any connection between her and the Scarlet Witch."

Jo raised her eyebrows. "I actually wasn't thinking that. Just seemed kind of odd." But she looked thoughtful.

Then, after dinner, he returned to GD and the main computer lab. Willow Rosenberg had left long ago, but Zane was still there. Jo'd complained a bit about that, too. "When was the last time you went home?" Fargo said as he walked in.

"I've got a couple changes of clothes here," Zane said, not looking up. "Besides, we all want the Scarlet Witch found, right?"

"Of course. Top priority. But that doesn't mean you don't go home every once in a while."

Zane laughed. "You've been talking to Jo, haven't you?"

He had, but Jo hadn't actually asked him to do anything about it. Still, a little creative lying never hurt, and if they were going to catch the Witch, Zane needed to be at his best. No one liked a 24-hour gaming marathon more than Fargo did, but no matter how much Black Blood of the Earth you consumed, you were a hell of a lot less efficient at the end than at the beginning. "Yes," he said, "And I prefer not to see how those new artificial limbs Dr. Yang is developing are progressing, thank you. Fill me in and go home until tomorrow morning."

Yes, there were people who were better at hacking and computer security than he was; Fargo had always been something of a generalist, though not as strong in the organic sciences as others. But, even in this universe, he'd helped upgrade the system, so he was reasonably confident that he could at least do something to fend off an attack.

If she was able to attack at all, that was. Willow had confirmed the quality of Zane's patch, although she too had testified to the superiority of the Scarlet Witch's suggestion.

Still, Fargo would be ready. He cracked his knuckles and waited.

X

Unfortunately, Vi had been right; the doorknob was very little help as the main ingredient in the tracking spell Willow had been planning to cast. When she'd tried, it had revealed that Beverly Barlowe was somewhere generally north, but it was so broad she could have been anywhere from east of Pribilof to the west coast of Hudson Bay, and points south in a wide triangle; no, trapezoid, as the "base" was about three miles long. Now, they didn't think they were going to have to break out their arctic gear, but that still left way too wide an area to be able to search without greatly narrowing the area.

Willow had avoided breaking into GD's servers this evening, both because she didn't want to be too predictable and because she was fairly sure she'd milked all she could out of it. There were other systems in the city, though, though even the most personal ones were better protected than most computer experts' outside city limits.

It had taken Willow magical help to break into GD's systems when she was in Maryland; the tiny, tiny hole she'd found had been a bonus, but she was willing to bet that pretty much no one could have broken in from the outside without some sort of help.

The other computers in the town were easier, whether they were the files at the police station or the personal computers of some of Beverly Barlowe's patients. Willow wasn't particularly happy about prying into people's personal lives, but made herself feel somewhat better by saying that A, she was doing it to help Buffy and Dawn (who, when she'd called earlier that night, were no better, but no worse), and B, she was doing her damnedest to make sure she stayed away from anything that wasn't connected with the woman.

According to what she read, no one had anything personal from her beyond a letter or two (and those hadn't been handled by her enough to be worth much in tracking), and an awful lot of people had had sexual fantasies about the psychiatrist – even after her betrayals were made public. Willow supposed she was good-looking enough, but evil tended to turn her off.

Evil in her partners, anyway. Evil for herself? Still fighting it, constantly.

So Vi'd been right again: They were going to have to do it the hard way.

Poop.

X

Around 2 AM, Douglas Fargo figured the Scarlet Witch wasn't going to be trying anything tonight. Admittedly, two prior appearances was a slim basis on which to calculate a pattern of behavior, particularly for hackers (the ones he knew tried to avoid being predictable), but it was a calculated risk. Or possibly the new patch had stumped her.

Odd thing, though. He'd backtracked her first attack, and while she had exploited the tiny security hole, she shouldn't have been able to get that far. It should have been impenetrable, and yet somehow she'd gained access.

He'd get someone to look into it tomorrow. They might have an even bigger problem on their hands than he'd thought.

X

The next morning, Jo Lupo met Vi and Willow for breakfast at Café Diem. When she got there, Carter was blocking a man from entering. "Vince threw you out," he said.

Right. This had to be the person who'd passed on the info about Vi's resemblance to Holly Marten

"I didn't do anything wrong!" the man yelled. "I only told my wife!"

Carter said, with an exasperated tone. "Right. Who told your kids, who texted it to everyone in school, who told it to everyone else not named Douglas Fargo. Vince said if you told anyone about it you'd be banned. You did; you're banned. And if you try to take this any further, let me remind you that the jail is right across the street."

"Where am I supposed to eat breakfast?"

"Try home." Jo said, walking up. "Hey, Carter. Having any trouble?"

"Am I?" Carter asked the man.

"No," the man said, walking away like he'd just been kicked out of Heaven.

Well, Café Diem was probably the closest thing on earth.

"Thanks," Carter said.

"Anytime you can't handle a single rowdy customer, let me know," Jo said, grinning.

Carter snorted and went back inside. Jo, Willow and Vi followed him.

While they were eating breakfast, noticed Vi having more than she and Willow put together. Vi noticed her noticing and said, "Fast metabolism."

No wonder she worked out so much. Jo hardly thought of herself as a picky eater, but if she ate as much as Vi she'd weigh 300 pounds.

A bit later, she invited Vi to another lunchtime workout. Vi looked at Willow, who said, "I'm good."

"Okay then," Vi said. "I'm up for it."

Jo spent her morning going over details about the Scarlet Witch – Zane was still convinced it was Beverly, but he'd had no luck convincing anyone else – running a drill, and checking out reports of missing items from a storage area on level four (which turned out not to be missing, just mislabeled and stuck in a different storage locker two levels down).

Then it was lunchtime. Vi met her in front of the gym and said, smiling, "Ready to eat my dust?"

Jo said back, "Ready to eat your words?"

They got on the treadmill and put the glasses on. This time the course was set in a virtual Amazon jungle – fewer hills, more twists and turns and jumps over logs and puddles and small streams.

Things were relatively uneventful for a couple of miles; they were running hard but neither she nor Vi was going all out.

Fewer hills. More jaguars.

One jumped out a bit behind them and growled.

Amazon wildlife was part of the program; part of the background. But nothing deadlier than a macaw was supposed to come anywhere near the runners.

But there was a malfunction on the holodeck, and instead of macaws, they got jaguars.

Fortunately, not flying jaguars. The "malfunction" was limited to it being able to knock people down.

Vi stopped, next to Jo, about fifteen feet in front of the jaguar, which was glaring at them. "When you said some of these were harder than others, you weren't kidding," she said. "What are we supposed to do?"

"This isn't part of the program," Jo lied. "Something must have gone wrong."

"So we take off the goggles -" Vi's hands, trying to remove the goggles, touched only air. Another part of the faked malfunction. It would stop in ten minutes. "Okay. So, we fight."

_This_, Jo hadn't planned on. "Fight?" The jaguar paced in front of them.

"Fight," Vi said. "A jaguar tops out at about 45 miles per hour. The fastest woman on the planet ran the mile in about four minutes twelve and a half seconds. If you and I could maintain that speed we'd be able to make about fourteen and a quarter miles per hour. Even if we could sprint at the speed of the fastest woman ever for a hundred meters we'd only be able to full off a little over 21 miles per hour. No. If it attacks, we fight."

Okay, this was something Jo hadn't planned for; Fargo hadn't really programmed it in, either. They'd thought of what might happen if the jaguar caught one of them, which is why it could knock them down and bat them around but not, you know, actually bite, claw, or eat them.

The jaguar, probably reflecting how it was programmed, was acting as puzzled as Jo felt. There weren't that many people whose reaction to "jaguar" was "attack." "Defend," maybe, but if no one else was in danger even her first reaction was going to be to try to get away –

The standoff continued.

Huh. Vi's instinct wasn't attack, either. _She was defending Jo_. Which meant that she thought that she was better equipped to fight off a 250-pound big cat than Jo was.

Jo turned around and took a step, sneaking a glance behind her. This, the virtual jaguar was ready for. It took a couple of steps forward and leaped.

Bracing herself for a knockdown, Jo was startled when she heard a yell and turned around. Vi had jumped, wrapped her arms around the jaguar in midair, and dragged it to the ground, and now the two of them were rolling around. The big cat was snarling and thrashing, but wasn't able to pull free – the fact that it couldn't bite and its paws were only doing impact damage might have had something to do that, but Fargo had promised a fully realized jaguar otherwise, and the way the thing was thrashing she had a hard time imagining a roided-up pro wrestler holding it down. How the skinny Vi was managing it, Jo had no clue.

Abruptly, Vi stood up, shoving the jaguar off. "What –" Jo began.

Vi interrupted with, "It's not biting or clawing me. So even if it can knock us down, it can't really hurt us."

"You sure?" The treadmills were programmed to simulate the effects of the environmental hazards; if you tripped over a rock, you actually felt it. The worst you would come out of it is slightly bruised. Anything worse than that and the system automatically shut down.

"Look at me. No rips, no tears, either in my clothes or my skin," she said. "Whether the jaguar's supposed to be here or not, it can't really hurt us." She shrugged. "Maybe someone's playing a practical joke on us or something." Looking at the jaguar, she said, "Shoo! Shoo!" while making hand motions.

Once again, the jaguar was confused. "So," Vi said, grinning. "Are we here to run or nature watch?"

Before they could start running again, though, the program ended. One of the gym technicians was standing over the machine and one of GD's doctors was asking if they were both okay.

They both said they were fine. Vi said, "If we're done, I'm going to go shower and eat lunch. Nice running with you, Jo."

Okay. What the hell had just happened?


	11. Fools, Psychopaths, and Warriors

Jack Carter wasn't quite as caught up in this search for the Scarlet Witch as Jo, Zane and Fargo were – though their code name had gotten him somewhere it hadn't told him that much about the woman – but he still had a few feelers out.

Still, it surprised him – he and Andy had just gotten back from tracking down a runaway robotic pig – when he got a call from a man who introduced himself as Detective Stein.

Jack picked up the phone. "Detective Stein. How can I help you?"

A gruff voice said, "Not detective anymore. I was a member of the Sunnydale Police Department – before, well –"

"Before the entire town disappeared into a big hole in the ground." Jack had seen that. GD had been getting ready to send a team there when the operation was abruptly canceled, leaving a very unhappy Nathan Stark. Normally, when Nathan'dbeen unhappy, Jack had been happy, but in this case he hadn't blamed him for being upset. The official word had been "No one know how it happened and we're happy to keep it that way." Which meant coverup, but for what no one in Eureka had had a clue. "Sure. I know it."

"Well, about eight years ago, back before my city and my job disappeared, I ran across a hacker who called herself the Scarlet Witch. One of my old colleagues said you were trying to track her down."

"She hacked into one of our local businesses," Jack said. "More than once."

"She did worse in Sunnydale," Stein said. "Once she hacked into the Sunnydale PD systems and ordered every officer on duty to spend three hours searching the Sunnydale junkyard for a dead body. She also bought me two one-way tickets to Tahiti and put the other in the name of the department secretary, then had someone call my wife to confirm the charges. I could go on for a while but I don't want to bore you. Still, I think you get what I'm saying."

Jack did. "You're saying you think she was a Sunnydale native."

"One who didn't like cops much."

Okay. This was a definite lead. "Thank you. I'll see what I can track down."

"You might have a problem with that," Stein said. "The Sunnydale PD computer system mostly went down with the town."

Also good to know. "That makes it harder," Jack said. "Shouldn't make it impossible."

"I hope not, Sheriff," Stein said. "Have a good day."

After Jack hung up, he explained the call to Andy and asked him to track down as much as he could about the crime statistics of Sunnydale, California for the last ten years.

"That'll be hard, Boss," Andy said."Most of the raw data is gone."

Jack grinned. "Come on, Andy. You know that if it was easy, I would have done it."

Puzzled, Andy said, "If you say so, Boss."

X XX X X

Now that Willow had finished double-checking Zane's security program, she was given a quick tour and then released into the general population. Invited to come up with her own, like Vi had done yesterday, she'd said, "Well, since I was a hacker, would anyone have a problem if I tried to find some other way to break into the system from the outside?"

"Looking for a day off on your second day, Rosenberg?" Zane asked.

"What? No, of course not! I was just thinking that if the Scarlet Witch can get in, maybe there's another hole? No offense, because this place has more computer security than the Pentagon, but where there's one gap there might be two, and it never hurts to be sure –"

Chuckling, Zane said, "Easy there. Wasn't actually suggesting you were slacking. Though if you figure out how, let me know."

None of the other computer specialists had an issue, either. GD's computer department was less hierarchical than any other department in the building; the person who was nominally in charge often cheerfully suborned themselves to someone else's big idea. There were routine duties, and hacker patrol (the local high school students tried to crack the security on a regular basis; those who succeeded were watched carefully and groomed for possible future employment), but otherwise, lacking an assignment from higher up, people tended to work on things that interested them. There were people developing new forms of educational software, people inventing new ways to computer-control devices, or to better control ones that already had computers, and people simply building better and smaller computer chips.

So Willow borrowed a laptop (signing a form promising to give up any future products of her genetic code if anything happened to it, not that she or Kennedy were planning on kids anyway) and left the computer section.

As she was driving to Café Diem – as good a place as any to sit and try to crack GD's systems, and hey, yummy food and drink – Willow thought about whether she should take this opportunity to also try to figure out where Beverly Barlowe's stuff was inside GD. After all, she had an excuse – Fargo had told them about her, and she could simply say she was curious about the woman – but quickly decided that it wasn't a good idea. One, Vi had asked Jo about it yesterday, and two, it was best not to give these geniuses any further clues that she might be particularly interested. No, she'd just take this opportunity to probe the security systems and see what she'd have to deal with when she broke in. The time they'd save wasn't worth the risk. Buffy and Dawn's condition had stabilized, so while this was still important, it wasn't the level of screaming emergency that would warrant that kind of risk.

She did definitely need to set up her next hacking job to originate somewhere else. Zane had let it slip that the last time the Witch had broken in he'd tracked her to somewhere in Oregon. That was too close for Willow's comfort.

The server brought her a coffee and a yogurt. She took a sip of coffee and got down to work.

X

Jo couldn't figure it out. Why would someone hide their physical abilities like Vi clearly was? She wasn't a robot or a clone. That didn't rule out genetic engineering of some sort, but she was too young to be any kind of supersoldier.

She'd thrown herself at the jaguar without a second's hesitation. Jo would have done the same thing, to protect someone, but she would have been knocked ass over appetite if she'd tried the same trick Vi had, and the jaguar would have almost certainly killed her. Vi had tackled the jaguar instead, and Jo was sure that if the cat had been real she could have killed it.

Only three types of people would do that: complete fools, psychopaths, and trained warriors. Jo had met GD brains who were fools; half of her and Carter's job was dealing with people who had more degrees than letters in their names but didn't have the common sense of a vole. Vi was not one of these people. Nor was she a psychopath. Jo had seen enough of them in the army - idiots who liked to kill and thought moving into an elite unit would give them more chances to do so. Not only were they disappointed, they were usually thrown out of the service in short order.

Which left warrior. But what kind? She was just short of 20. She hadn't had the time to be in and out of the military and there were no hints of gangs at all in her background, of any kind - street or otherwise. She had some scars on her – she'd seen that when they were changing – way more than a woman her age would normally have.

So what, and when, the hell had she been fighting?

A detailed look through her records left Jo even more frustrated. Her parents hadn't been military; to the contrary, her parents were scientists, just like Holly and Vi, though not quite at the GD level of genius. She was so clean you could see through her; not so much as a day of detention in high school, never mind any criminal record.

The only weirdness (big-ass weirdness, though) happened a couple of years back when a serial killer, Caleb Beaumont, attacked her and her martial arts teacher while her parents were studying frogs in Africa; she and a lot of other girls targeted by the killer eventually ended up in Sunnydale, which is where she'd met Willow Rosenberg. What happened then was unclear, but Beaumont's body had been found in the Sunnydale rubble, at least, so that was good.

Jo blinked. Sunnydale. Right. Nathan Stark had been ready to take a team there – in both timelines – and right before they were ready to leave he'd gotten a call ordering not only not to go, but to hand over any preliminary analysis they might have done to the DoD and then destroy any copies they had lying around. It was the only time she'd ever seen Stark have a genuine temper tantrum; as a former soldier Jo was more used to following orders without question than anyone else in Eureka, but even she knew that "because I say so" was damned unsatisfying, and that, dressed up in ten-dollar words and expanded to ten pages, had been the only explanation they'd ever gotten.

Still, no one, not even Nathan himself, thought the survivors had had anything to do with it; it would take something on the order of a tactical nuke to cause that kind of damage. One thing Jo _was_ an expert on was weapons, and even Eureka didn't have something non-nuclear that could have done that kind of damage and leave no residue or trace of any kind.

Yeah, she'd been ticked too, not being able to go.

Anyway, the survivors, mostly young women, had stayed more or less together ever since, though they'd moved across the country. Vi had become a teacher – at 18? well, she was a Eureka-level genius – at a place in Maryland called the Unbroken Academy, where she'd stayed until a few days ago.

There was nothing in Vi's history that would account for her being a warrior. Even if she was a martial arts prodigy, that wouldn't make her a trained fighter.

There was something there. But what?

X

After a few hours, when Jack Carter returned from a patrol (he saw nothing worse than a jaywalker – crimes in Eureka tended to be either trivial or major felonies, with very little in between), Andy said, "Welcome back, Boss!"

"Productive afternoon, Andy?"

"Yes, it was," he said enthusiastically. "Take a look at who was in Sunnydale, California, approximately five and one half years ago."

Jack looked at the screen. "Well, what do you know. We might owe Zane an apology."

There, on the screen, in a capture from the UC-Sunnydale web site (apparently archived somewhere) was a picture of the guest lecturer for a psychology class taught by a woman named Margaret Walsh:

Beverly Barlowe.


	12. Safe, Except for Murders

Deputy Andy continued, "And, of course, Willow Rosenberg's from there and Vi Fisher spent some time there, but you already knew that."

Did he? Jack wasn't sure that he had. That complicated things a bit.

Beverly had the longer history with Eureka, but Willow was a computer expert where Beverly, as far as he knew, really wasn't.

Beverly, though, had both a long-standing grudge against Eureka and an obvious reason to look up the information; Willow Rosenberg didn't, as far as Jack knew.

Which didn't rule out them working together, of course, but nothing in Rosenberg's file (or Vi fisher's, for that matter) showed anything worse than hacking done for the sake of pranks. Jack would keep it in mind.

"Anything else interesting?"

"A lot, Boss. It took a while to compile, because the resources were so scattered, but it looks like Sunnydale was the murder capital of the United States."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. Take a look at the numbers."

Jack bent down to look at the screen and swore. "What. The. Hell?" If a large city had had a murder rate this high, someone would have sent in the National Guard.

Sunnydale was oddly like Eureka in one way – crimes tended to be of the traffic ticket/public drunkenness variety, or murder or the related felonies. There were almost no crimes in a vast gap encompassing everything from pickpocketing to bank robbery. There was a headline Jack remembered seeing publicized a while back, early in his law enforcement career: "Mayor says DC is Safe Except for Murders." It was funny at the time, but for some reason, it wasn't striking him as particularly funny now.

It didn't directly affect anything about the investigation, but it was scary as hell. (It also made Detective Stein either incompetent or corrupt, or both, but it explained why he hadn't been able to get another job in law enforcement. With the resume he was likely to have, he was lucky to get a job doing anything.) How had this slipped through the cracks?

"Did you find anything else about Beverly in Sunnydale?"

"Hints, Boss," Andy said. "But it's above my security clearance. Yours, too."

Jack blinked. High security for a guest lecturer at the college? Something didn't add up. Of course, as he was rapidly figuring out, there was a truckload about Sunnydale that didn't add up. "Is there anyone in Eureka whose clearance it isn't above?"

"Director Fargo," Andy said. "And Dr. Blake. Only she's not actually in Eureka right now."

"Okay, then. The more I dig into this, the more I don't like it. See if you can find out from any other sources what Beverly was doing there in Sunnydale. In the meantime, I'm going to call Fargo."

X

Café Diem was really the hub of the town – the non-work hub, Willow meant, though she was hardly the only person working from the restaurant. Vincent had brushed off any of Willow's qualms about taking up space by saying, "If I didn't want people working from here for hours at a time, I wouldn't have such comfy chairs. Don't worry about it." And then he'd brought her another Moxie, and an apple tart, just to prove he meant it.

So far, refraining from using any magic, it was difficult, if not impossible, to crack GD's security systems – particularly because there were a dozen computer experts inside GD with nothing better to do who knew she was trying and would love to smack her down. It would have been completely impossible if she'd been in Maryland; the only way in there involved paving the way with a little bit of magic, and then exploiting the hole she'd found.

Still, using the GD laptop instead of her own, not using magic was a must. Getting in had required a lot of what would be "bobbing and weaving" if it was a Slayer fighting a vampire, leaving false trails, setting up one program to be really clumsy and other one to be more subtle, but minusculely not subtle enough to not be detected.

If the first one was smashing through the back door and the second was scaling the side of the building and letting herself in via the attic window, what she was doing was smuggling herself in a delivery truck. In short, she was piggybacking on legitimate e-mails with legitimate attachments, making damn sure she looked harmless, and going from there to check out the security specs, including the stuff she and Vi weren't supposed to know about.

The best part was that she was doing it in plain sight, too.

It would have been a lot simpler if they'd felt they could simply go up to Fargo and say, "Hey, Beverly Barlowe was involved in a project six years ago that's causing some problems for a couple of friends of mine; any chance we could look through your notes and see if we can figure out a way to fix them?" But while they had friends in the government, they didn't quite have the pull they needed to explain how they'd connected the woman to Global Dynamics in the first place, or how they knew that GD was more than it looked to be from the outside. Not without getting a lot more questions than they were comfortable handling.

Of course, going the secret route had its own hazards; openness could lead to uncomfortable questions, secretiveness, if caught, could lead to uncomfortable questions from people who made Jack Bauer look like a wimp. Still, it wasn't like they could exactly change tacks now.

Okay. Beverly's stuff, what of it hadn't been confiscated by various government organizations, was residing in a vault on level 11 of GD. To Willow's surprise, it wasn't nearly the hardest place in GD to break into, though it would require a lot more than the spell Vi had used to sneak into the empty boarding house.

GD was open 24 hours a day, of course. There were experiments running around the clock, some of which couldn't be trusted to even the kind of computer judgment they were capable of programming in around here. So there would be no sneaking in past the security guards kind of wacky hijinks. If Willow wanted, she could just walk straight in the front door.

Huh. Might be a good idea, at that. Thing was, while people came and went 24-7, there were a lot fewer of them around at night; easier to avoid being discovered, but also easier to pinpoint who it was if something went wrong. (Willow didn't _think_ anything would go wrong, but nearly a decade of Scoobying had taught her that not only did no plan survive contact with the enemy, but that very few survived the first five minutes without something going all kerplooey, whether you contacted the enemy or not. So far, so good, but that's why she had the emergency teleport spell in reserve, if things went to hell.)

So they'd do it during the day, which meant she might need Vi's help after all.

"Aaaand done."

She hadn't realized she'd said it out loud until a nearby voice said, "Done what?"

It was Sheriff Carter. "Done with my work for right now, Sheriff. I volunteered to try to break into GD's computer systems to see if there were any more holes. I found one – not a huge one, but it's there."

"Anything to worry about?"

"A big nope to that, unless someone else comes to Eureka, finds the hole, and exploits it in the next twenty minutes or so. And I'm thinking strangers, not too common around here."

"They do tend to stick out like sore thumbs. Say," he said, "You're from Sunnydale, California, right?"

"Originally. Why?"

"Can I sit?"

To say no would have seemed suspicious, so Willow said, "Sure. I'm done with my project for the day anyway."

He began speaking more quietly. "Two things. One, you went to school at UC-Sunnydale, right?"

"Yeah . . . "

"You ever run across this woman?" He showed her a picture of Beverly Barlowe, one that looked about ten years old.

She couldn't remember seeing her before a few days ago, so . . . "No. And again with the why?"

"How about Margaret Walsh?"

"You mean the evil bitch-monster of death? Yeah. Psychology professor. Not a nice person. Brilliant woman, but her ethical compass pointed nowhere, if you know what I mean."

The Sheriff said, "Yeah. I do." After a second, "And why, well, the first woman was Beverly Barlowe – Fargo told me he told you and Miss Fisher something about her and her connection to Holly's death – and it turned out she was in Sunnydale about six years ago, around the time the Scarlet Witch was. She guest lectured at your college; Dr. Walsh invited her."

Willow honestly didn't remember. "Maybe I was sick that day."

"That's alright. I was hoping maybe someone might remember why she was there."

It wouldn't lead anywhere, but if the Sheriff wanted to travel down the trail of thinking that Beverly Barlowe was the Scarlet Witch, she sure as heck wasn't going to do anything to convince them otherwise."My friend Buffy – oh, but she's sick now – and my ex-boyfriend both were in the class. Want me to call him and ask?"

"Thanks. That would be great."

"Anything I can do to help find her, Sheriff. I want to find her probably almost as badly as you do." Or maybe more, though quantifying badness, maybe not something they'd figured out how to do yet. "And two?"

"Two?" he said with a look of mild confusion. "Oh. Right. This is more to satisfy my personal curiosity than anything else. What the hell was going on in Sunnydale?"

A wide open question which could have three dozen different meanings, depending on what the asker knew. So: "You're going to need to make that a bit more specific. Because right now, whether you mean the social life, the reason it collapsed, or something else, kind of beyond me."

"The crime rate."

Made sense. Time for Sunnydale Explanation number one. "Most of the local government was corrupt – from the dogcatcher right up to the mayor, who had several rackets going. The local gangs got pretty much blanket immunity as long as they did some favors for him every once in a while."

"But the number of people killed per year –"

"Ridiculous. I know. I lived there for twenty years."

"How could he have covered that up?"

Willow shrugged. "Beats me. The folks who succeeded him after he died couldn't really make anything any better; the gangs had had it their way for too long for anyone who wasn't, you know, either Dirty Harry or Superman to make any headway cleaning up the town."

The sheriff shook his head with obvious skepticism. "Unbelievable."

"You don't know the half of it." At this point, he didn't know the hundredth. "Half the websites out there that mention Sunnydale seem to think its sinking into a big hole in the ground was divine retribution from a really pissed-off God." She wasn't kidding. There was a website called Port Royale 3000 that, in the glorious language of the semi-coherent conspiracy theorist, cited Scripture to prove its point. Not a single one had come anywhere near the truth.

And, you know, thank the Goddess for that.

"Unbelievable," he repeated. "Um, calling your ex - that's not going to be a problem, is it?"

"Naaah. We're friends now and we talk every once in a while anyway."

"Good. Again, thanks."

"Anything I can do."

The Sheriff left; after a few minutes, so did Willow.

X

"Thanks, Sheriff," Douglas Fargo said, hung up, and thought. What could Beverly Barlowe have been working on in Sunnydale six years ago that was so high-security even he barely had clearance to know what it was?

And was it connected with Holly?

He told Larry he was locking the door and not to bug him for anything less than the imminent destruction of the town. Of course, in Eureka, that gave him, on median, about six hours, but that should be enough.

Then he left the computer at his desk and walked over to the wall. The truly high-security systems ran on an entirely separate computer network – one not even accessible from the outside, or even most of the terminals in GD, for that matter. Only he and Dr. Blake could access this one, and her only if she was temporarily in charge for some reason.

He handled the security protocols and typed in what he was interested in – huh. Beverly had been involved in some experiment with a military psychologist named Walsh. Sounded like a prototype of the device she'd used to take control of Dr. Blake a few months back – but the experiment had never come to fruition because something had gone horribly wrong and most of the people in the base had died.

Okay. Sounds like an experiment even Fargo would have backed away from, and he hadn't gotten a reputation for inappropriately pressing buttons by accident. But what killed –

Oh.

Oh, wow.

These Hostile Sub-Terrestrials they were talking about?

_They were demons and vampires._

Oh, the language didn't say it flat out, but anyone as skilled at scientific doubletalk as he was could pick it out.

Yes! He was right –

Oh, crap. He couldn't tell anyone.

This was _so_ unfair.

He looked through the names of those who were cleared for knowledge, hoping beyond hope that he could talk to someone about it. Anyone. Dr. Blake, sure, if he had to, but she probably wouldn't draw the same conclusions he did. "Vampires are impossible," she'd say, and he couldn't blame her; he loved Sarah Michelle Gellar in _Freedom_, but he didn't think superheroes were real, darn –

What?

How –

Well, he could talk to someone about it. Someone in town now.

But how the hell did _Willow Rosenberg_ have this kind of clearance?


	13. Roundabout

Larry?" Fargo said after a few minutes. "Find Willow Rosenberg and send her to my office."

"Sure thing." A bit later: "She's not on the premises right now, but she'll be back in about ten minutes. I went ahead and told her to come up to see you when she gets back."

"Thank you, Larry. The same thing that held for the last half hour still holds: I'll be doing some high-security work and I don't want to be disturbed."

"Yes, Mr. Fargo."

When fifteen minutes later she hadn't shown up, he called Larry back. "Where is she?"

"Sorry, but Ms. Lupo caught Ms. Rosenberg in the Rotunda before she got here and when I went out to talk to her she glared at me and told me to go back to my office and stay there.

"Well, then, you'll have to decide if you're more afraid of her or me."

"Her," Larry said without a second's hesitation.

"Of course." Fargo walked out to the Rotunda – shooting Larry a glare that, even if it wasn't nearly as intimidating as Jo's, indicated clearly that he was not happy and would be taking it out on him later.

_Everyone_ was giving Jo's discussion with Willow a wide berth. Jo didn't seem angry, exactly, but clearly wasn't in any mood to be trifled with. Her glare would have sent Fargo running for his life most of the time.

This wasn't most of the time.

Willow, astonishingly, was giving as good as she was getting. It took guts or a complete lack of sense to stand up to Jo when she was in a mood like this, and he didn't peg Willow as having no sense.

Feeling not unlike he was about to step between a Cyberdemon and a Spider Mastermind armed with nothing but a pistol, he stepped closer and said as firmly as he could, "Ms. Lupo, I need to see Ms. Rosenberg in my office immediately."

Jo wheeled on him. "But -" she said.

"No buts. You can talk to her later. Right now, I really need to talk with her."

Jo opened her mouth, closed it again, and said, "Fine. But we're not done," and stormed off.

Willow said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Fargo said. "Come on up to my office."

"Um," Willow said, "Should I get ready to run for my life?" She laughed nervously as she said it.

That was weird. Fargo might not have been the greatest person in the world at picking up social cues, but he recognized when someone was pretending they were making a joke to cover up anxiety; it was one of the first skills he'd mastered. He supposed it could be because she was being called into the Director's office for no clear reason, but he didn't think so.

"Nothing to worry about," he said jovially. "Come on in. There's just something weird I want to talk with you about."

He headed to his office, with Willow close behind.

X

Hours later, Jo Lupo was still confused and even more frustrated. She'd gone to try to talk to Vi Fisher, but Dr. Peterson had told her that Vi was out searching for giant hogweed to help her in her research. So, while she went through the rest of her day (nothing too serious, unfortunately; on a day when she would have loved to have an excuse to yell at someone the worst thing that happened was someone misplacing a tool).

Then, as she was headed back to her office after the tool had been found, she saw Willow Rosenberg entering the building carrying a laptop. Jo beelined to her and caught her right around the middle of the Rotunda. "We need to talk," she said.

"Sure! I just have to talk to –"

"Now," Jo said.

"But I was told I had to –"

"Talking to the Director of Security pretty much overrides any other instructions you've been given."

Willow blinked and said in a cold, calm voice, "Okay. I imagine the exception to that rule is if the person giving the other instructions is the Director of GD. I was told when I got here to report directly to him."

"You can give me five minutes," Jo said. Larry walked up then and Jo turned and gave him a look that said that unless the building was about to explode or be invaded by intelligent ants, to go away. He got the message, and the hell out of there.

"I don't want to get fired on my second day, so I'm thinking, probably not."

"I want to talk to you about Vi."

A look of concern crossed Willow's face. "Is she hurt?"

"No."

The concerned look was replaced by a look of annoyance. "Is she under arrest or about to do something really stupid you need me to talk her out of?"

"No," Jo repeated, then took a breath. "Look. It's nothing like that. I just need to ask you about something that happened in the gym at lunchtime."

"I wasn't even in the building at lunchtime."

Before Jo could answer, she heard someone else coming up. Turning, she saw Fargo standing there with an irritated look on his face. "Ms Lupo, I need to see Ms. Rosenberg in my office immediately." Fargo's timing stank. She'd barely said a word in protest when he said, even more firmly, "No buts. You can talk to her later. Right now, I really need to talk to her."

"Fine," she said. "But we're not done."

As the two headed for Fargo's office, Jo thought. Maybe she could have handled that better.

But subtlety had never really been her style. The trick with the virtual treadmills was about as tricky as she tended to get.

Still – she looked around and noticed people whispering and hurrying by – there was no reason she'd had to do it in public.

She took a deep breath and started walking back to her office – and then God smiled on her. Vi Fisher was just walking in, carrying (easily, it seemed) a container containing three good-sized plants covered in something that looked like plastic but, this being GD, probably wasn't.

So, forcing a smile onto her face, she said, "Hey! Vi! Can we talk?"

Willow honestly had no idea what Jo Lupo was even talking about with this incident in the gym. If there had been a serious problem, Vi would have called her.

Whatever it was, though, Willow suspected it wasn't good for their mission, though it didn't seem like a "drop everything and teleport away" level of problem. Yet.

Then Fargo came over and pulled her away, only to amp up her nervousness by saying he wanted to talk about something weird.

Well, out of the frying pan, into the erupting volcano.

She took a deep breath and followed him into his office, stopping only when he said, "Larry, remember what I said."

Larry nodded. "Will do, Director. You won't be disturbed."

Then, when the door was shut, instead of inviting her to take a seat, he said, "Stay there for a second, please," and then went over and did something on the wall to her right. Once he was done, a computer screen popped up. "One more second . . . ." he said, touching the screen. "Okay. Come on over."

He sounded excited, confused, and annoyed at the same time. "As Director of GD," he said, motioning for Willow to come over, "I have clearance to know many things that are classified well beyond top secret. Apparently, you are the only other person currently in Eureka with whom I can talk about one of them. Please. Take a look."

Willow began to read – and knew within five seconds what Fargo was talking about. The Initiative. "So, tell me," he continued. "Are 'Hostile Sub-Terrestrials what I think they are?"

Suspecting he knew, Willow nonetheless wasn't going to let herself be baited into giving away the one state secret she apparently had legitimate access to. "Depends. What do you think they are?"

"These are the most roundabout descriptions I've ever seen," he said. "But look. 'Hostile 65: Sanguivore. Sensitive to solar radiation, to the point of combustion leading if not arrested to otherwise unassisted termination. Face metamorphosis when subject is hostile or requires sustenance. The most common HST. Unnecessary for further study; eligible for further study to determine other significant vulnerabilities.' So Hostile 65 eats blood, bursts into flames and dies when exposed to sunlight, and its face changes when it's hungry. Call me crazy, but that sounds to me like a vampire."

That description was clearly designed to make most non-scientists' eyes glaze over and skip to the parts that were easier to read. It didn't work on people like Fargo to whom scientific jargon was a daily part of his life. "Yes, it does."

"So? Is it one? If you're worried about clearance –"

Willow sighed. "That's not it. Yes, it's a vampire. Yes, vampires are real. No, they're not nice, not friendly, not romantic, and 99.95% of them who've ever existed would kill you as soon as look at you if you caught them at the wrong time." A slight exaggeration – vampires did not, in general, slaughter everyone in their path and many, like Spike even before his chip was installed, were perfectly capable of talking to humans on occasion without trying to drain them dry. But it was better for novices to think that every vampire out there was out to kill them, because it was safer."

Fargo said, "Cool. Which would make the rest of these . . . what? Demons? Devils?"

"They prefer demons. The word devil carries even more unpleasant connotations. Most of them are from other dimensions, although a lot of them have been here on Earth for generations."

"Individual demons or families?"

"Both," Willow said.

"Oh. Even cooler."

"Not all demons are evil. A lot of them are, but some of them just want to live their lives." Vi hadn't detected a single demon in Eureka; after the break-in last night, she'd gone on another patrol and hadn't encountered anything that triggered her radar. Even if Taggart's explanation of why there couldn't possibly be any vampires in the town was right, that didn't explain the absence of demons.

"Good to know."

"How did this come up?"

He explained that the Sheriff had called him about Beverly Barlowe, who was involved in a top secret project back in Sunnydale – so top secret that only a handful of people had access to it, including Fargo, a Dr. Blake who was head of the medical department, and her. "So, first, thanks for telling me that vampires and demons are real. And if this report is right –" It had seemed basically accurate from what Willow had seen, though circumlocutory in the extreme – "then you, and some of your friends, are cleared as well. It doesn't get much into your role, though."

Well, no, it wouldn't. "So you're asking what that role was?"

"Yes, please."

"Are you planning to do anything like that here?"

If the shock on his face wasn't genuine, he was a better actor than Laurence Olivier had ever been. "What? No. Absolutely not. Any super-soldiers we come up with are going to be volunteers only. Experiments on - I was going to say people but that would be the wrong word, and it wouldn't include Andy either – sentient beings, I guess?" Willow nodded. "Right. Experiments on sentient beings who haven't explicitly volunteered for the job aren't what we do here. We may do mad science, but we try to avoid hiring people who seem like they enjoy rubbing their hands, cackling, and calling people fools." After a second, he gave a quick grin and said, "At least, those who enjoy it in a non-ironic fashion."

Willow took a deep breath. Two and a half days in and this was the second person they were going to have to explain the story to.

"Dr. Fargo?" came a voice over the intercom.

Clearly irritated, Fargo said, "Larry, unless the building is about to fall into an artificial naked singularity, you're fired."

"Before you fire me, you need to come out here."

"Looks like the explanation will have to wait," Fargo said. Willow went with him.

Larry led them out to the Rotunda, where sounds of distant fighting could be heard. "What _is _that?"

Someone in a uniform came up. "Ms. Lupo is fighting someone in the security office. The door's locked; we can't get in."

"Anyone know who's in there with her?" Fargo called out.

Willow knew the answer before someone called it out. "That new plant biologist."

Okay, make that the third person.

She looked around at the crowd.

_If_ they were lucky.


	14. Don't Volunteer Anything

Author's note: I riff on an extremely funny line by another fanfic writer here. I will ID author and story at the end.

XxXxX

Vi entered GD's rotunda, carrying three young giant hogweed plants covered in an extremely fine mesh designed to let the plants have oxygen but not spread seeds (they were too immature to spread seeds, but in the case of a noxious invasive species like giant hogweed, better safe than sorry was the watchword).

The container weighed maybe 150 pounds – she'd had to bring a lot of the surrounding soil with her to preserve the root systems – so while it wasn't actually hard for her to carry, she was careful to make sure it looked harder than it was. But only a couple of steps in, she heard Jo Lupo's voice say, "Hey, Vi! Can we talk?"

She carefully put the container down and said, "Sure, but I have to get these plants down to the botany lab."

"You can call Dr. Peterson and have her pick them up," Jo said. "Better yet, I'll do it for you." And she took out a cell phone and did just that, which left Vi puzzled. What could Jo want to talk to her about so urgently? It couldn't be that they'd been caught; if that was the case, there'd probably be more people there than just the head of GD and a bored-looking security person standing on the other side of the room, even if they didn't know what a Slayer was capable of –

Oh, crap.

Jo might not know what a Slayer was capable of, but she had plenty of reason to know that Vi was capable of more than she should have been. Just because Jo wasn't one of the geniuses didn't mean she was "Sunnydale blind," as Willow had put it; in Eureka, everyone was used to thinking that was so outside the box that, per Friends, "The box is a dot to you."

Still, it didn't seem like Jo was getting ready to have her or Willow shot, so she'd go with it for the moment.

Shutting her phone, Jo said, "All set. She's sending a couple of people up." Then, after a second, "You do know we have transports for things that are that heavy, right? You didn't have to bring it in the building yourself."

"Actually, no," Vi said. "Wish someone had told me; carrying 150 pounds of plants. And if you don't mind, I'm happy to talk with you but I'd like to make sure they pick up the plants. It was a lot of work to find these and dig them out."

Jo agreed with a smile, though if it was genuine, Vi was a fan of skunk cabbage.

"Nothing do with Aunt Holly?' she asked as they waited just to be sure. That would be something Jo would probably want to discuss in private, though Vi couldn't see what about that would make the other woman this impatient.

"No. It's nothing to do with that, I promise."

Jo had apparently ordered Dr. Peterson to get people up to the Rotunda toot-sweet, because only a minute later, two of Vi's fellow scientists got off the elevator, came over and said, as they picked up the hogweed, "We'll take care of this," and departed while Vi was yelling instructions after them.

"That's taken care of," Jo said. "So come on, let's talk."

Vi still wasn't quite getting a "run for your life" vibe off of the Security head, but it was damn sure everything was not nearly as cheerful as Jo was apparently determined to pretend it was. "After you," Vi said.

"Right," Jo said, and began to walk off. Vi followed her around a corner and down a short flight of stairs, into a fairly large room with a couple of cells built into the wall. Instead of taking a seat, Jo moved to the edge of the room, moved a picture of President Obama, and pushed a button. There was a click from the door behind her. Since at the moment Vi wasn't entirely sure whether Jo was keeping other people out or her in, this didn't exactly make her feel sanguine about the whole thing.

"Okay," Vi said from her position in the center of the room. "You have me here. Behind locked doors, even. So. What do you want?"

"I want you to tell me why you were dogging it on the treadmill yesterday."

"Why do you think I was dogging it?" This was one of the rules of Slayers – number 12. "Don't volunteer _anything_." If someone thought they had figured out Slaying, and magic, then make them explain themselves. The only exception was the person who knew about vampires and thought they were cool.

Rule number 1 was "don't die," of course, but Xander had pointed out that the best way not to die was to not take the kind of risks Slayers took in the first place, so now there was a rule 0: "Don't let innocents die."

"Are you denying it?" Jo asked.

"Can you prove I was?"

Jo slowly blew out a breath. "I don't get why you're being difficult about this. I'm not out to get you in trouble, get you fired, or anything. I just want to know how you can do what you did."

"Spell it out," Vi said.

"You tackled a jaguar!" Jo finally said. "Even knowing it was fake, you couldn't possibly have known it couldn't hurt you."

"That means I have guts, not that I was dogging it on a fake run in the mountains."

"You're going to make me drag it out of you, aren't you?"

"No, I'm going to make you tell me what _you_ think. Give me your evidence. Otherwise, you're fishing."

"Okay. You blindsided the jaguar. _Successfully_. I might have tried – I've got guts, too – but the jaguar would have clobbered me. And then, it would have killed me. The way you were thrashing around with it, you would have killed the jaguar if you'd had to. And then there's the run. Not only did you easily pass me the first day, you weren't even breathing hard. And then you _let_ me catch up with you – and that's insulting. I don't need to be coddled. If you're that much better than me, I can take it. I may not like it, but I can take it."

Not surprised by the information, Vi was still a bit taken aback at the angle Jo was taking. She thought Vi was holding back to spare her feelings? Not even.

Still, she'd clearly seen enough to know something was up. She hadn't figured everything out – or gotten even close – but she knew enough. And unless someone started throwing around forget spells or their scientific equivalent, that wasn't going to happen. (And Willow would sooner swallow bleach than use a forget spell. Rona had suggested it to her once and Willow had very nearly taken her head off. There was a story there, but it wasn't one anyone had really explained, and given Willow's reaction, it wasn't anything she was going to ask to have explained.)

"I'm not keeping myself in check to spare your feelings. There are other reasons."

"And they are?"

"Think about it. If you could do what you think I can do, would you make it public?"

Let's see what she did with that.

XxXxX

Jo thought. Her instinct was to say, "Why not?" but that was almost certainly going to be the wrong answer. But for the life of her, she couldn't see why someone who was as physically gifted as Vi Fisher seemed to be would want to hide her abilities. Her parents were scientists, so they weren't likely to have wanted to push her into doing something with her talents if she hadn't wanted to.

Obviously there was a reason, and since Vi was a smart woman it was going to be a good one. And it was going to have something to do with the weapons she was carrying. Given what they worked with, it wasn't against GD rules to be carrying anything except firearms, but Jo had spotted a couple of knives and, in the purse, a wooden stake and enough bandages, thread and tape to make her own Frankenstein.

Finally Jo said, "I can't answer that because I don't know your reason for keeping it secret."

"Okay," Vi said. "I guess I'm going to need to show you. How heavy is that desk?"

"About 150 pounds. Why?"

"Stand back. I don't want to hurt you by mistake."

Looking at Vi's face, Jo could tell that she was completely serious. And she wasn't going to insult the woman by doubting her, so she moved over to where she was in front of the cell. Vi then went over to the desk, took everything that was on it off and put it on the floor; Jo would have just swept it off, herself – and then picked the desk up and lifted it over her head.

Which Jo also could have done, though it wouldn't have been nearly as smooth.

If that had been it, Jo would have been unimpressed. That wasn't nearly it. She then threw it upward – it nearly scraped the ceiling! – and caught it as Jo instinctively ducked. Then, to prove that wasn't a fluke, she did it twice more. Then she balanced it on her left hand while walking across the room, and finished off by putting it back. When she started to put the stuff she'd taken off back on, Jo said. "Hold on a second. Let's arm-wrestle."

"You'll lose." She wasn't bragging, wasn't rubbing it in; she was just saying what she thought was the truth.

Jo knew she would, and said as much. "I know that. I'm expecting to. But do me a favor: What I want you to do is go all-out. Show me what you're capable of. No holding back."

"You got it," Vi said. They sat down, put their elbows down, and clasped hands. "On three?"

"One, two, three," Jo said. Her hand was on the table before she could have finished "four." "Wow," she said. "Can we try that again?"

This time she held out until somewhere in the middle of "five." Figuring that no matter how many times she tried she wouldn't be able to get past six, even if she used both hands, she said, "Okay. Thanks. And the running?"

"All part of the package," Vi said.

"And tackling the jaguar? Strength is one thing but that needed agility, reaction time, and good timing. Jo might have been able to pull that off, but it would have been one of the toughest things she'd have ever done in my life. You probably would have nailed it 99 out of 100 times. Me? Seven. At best. So you're not just strong. You're fast, tough, and fast on your feet." She took a breath. "I'd like to see how tough."

"You'll lose," she repeated.

"Probably. But I bet I get a few good licks in."

She put her purse down on the desk, turned around, and said, "Ready?"

"Ready."

About one thing, at least, Jo was right: Vi was faster, stronger, and tougher, and was an excellent fighter; but Jo had more experience and Vi, whoever she fought, clearly wasn't quite as used to fighting people with experience as Jo was.

In the first couple of minutes, this made the fight seem almost even. "Seem." Then, after Jo connected with a punch to the jaw, Vi said, "Okay," and from that point on Jo was lucky to block half the shots. She got lucky, and knew it was lucky, when she managed to palm-punch Vi in the left shoulder, but that was literally the only time she connected.

If this has been a fight where they were going all out, she would have been out within ten seconds after Vi had said "okay."

They stopped when, simultaneously, her phone rang and there was pounding on the door. "Jo!" she heard Fargo say. "Is everything okay?"

Catching her breath, Jo said, "Yeah! Hold on a second." As she went to get the phone, she noticed that Vi wasn't even breathing hard.

It was Carter. "Jo? Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Me and Vi were just duking it out."

She could see his eyebrows raise as he said, "In the middle of your office? Look, if there's a problem-"

"No problem." She went over to unlock the door, and by gesture let Willow and Fargo in while making sure everyone else knew that if they came into the room they wouldn't be leaving it for a while. "But I think I've finally got it."

"You do? What have you got, Jo?"

"Carter, I've figured out who this woman is. She's a genius – smart enough to be an employee here at the age of nineteen. She's carrying high-grade weapons, including some almost no one else on Earth uses anymore. But no guns. She was able to take down a jaguar with her bare hands and beat me at both arm wrestling and in an all-out brawl. She could probably outshoot me. She has a redheaded friend who's a computer genius. She's carrying a first aid kit with her that's probably able to do anything short of organ transplants, and judging by her scars, she's been in life-or-death fights more than once."

"So what are you saying?"

Jo laughed and caught her breath. "Carter, I believe this woman is Batman."

XxXxX

Apologies to DianeCastle, the hilarious end of whose 17th chapter of _Xander and Yet Another Demon_ I riff on there at the end. When I realized where this was going, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.


	15. Batman Beyond

Jack Carter said, "You think she's _Batman_?"

Jo's voice came through the phone, the sarcasm ringing loud and clear. "Yeah, Carter. I really think a 19-year old woman is Batman." More distantly, he could hear someone laughing.

"Had me worried for a minute there." For a brief second, he'd entertained fantasies that either something was making people delusional, or worse, that Vi Fisher was currently dressed up as Batman and in order to get things back to normal he'd have to take on the whole damn Justice League.

And besides, hadn't they already _done_ superheroes? The thing about Eureka was, it rarely handed you the same problem twice. Which meant every time something screwed up, they had to come up with a new way of fixing it. Jack was constantly amazed that his predecessor, Sheriff Cobb, had made it as long as he had without keeling over of a heart attack.

"Still, if this isn't _something _at least vaguely similar, I'll eat your hat."

"Okay . . ." Jack still wasn't entirely sure where Jo was going with this.

"So I think you need to come – what?" There was a babble of dialogue at the far end; Jack could hear Fargo say clearly, "Everyone! Back to work! Now!" but everything else was gobbledygook until Jo finally came back and said, "Carter? You can come. But by yourself. And get ready for a shock."

"I swear, Jo, if _anyone_ in that room is in costume, I'll find something to arrest you for."

"Yeah, good luck on that one," Jo said. "Come on. It'll make more sense when you get here."

Carter thought about saying that it couldn't possibly make less sense, but he'd lived in Eureka too long to make a stupid mistake like that. He said he'd be there and hung up. Then he said to Andy, "Andy? I've got to head to GD. Don't call me unless it's something you can't handle yourself."

Andy nodded. "Will do, boss."

XxXxX

Willow wasn't sure what she expected to see when she and Fargo finally got into the security office, but was very much relieved that there wasn't, you know, more bloodshed. Jo had an assortment of bruises – so did Vi, to Willow's mild surprise, until she remembered, Jo Lupo, former Army Ranger, so probably a pretty good fighter. Jo stopped anyone else from coming in after them with a glare that would have made Giles jealous. Locking the door, she went back to the phone. On their way down from the Rotunda, Fargo had called the Sheriff to let him know something was up.

Willow went over to check on Vi. "What happened?" she said quietly. A quick look at the bruises showed nothing out of the ordinary for a Slayer, but still, as Vi's de facto Watcher while they were in Eureka, it was her job to be sure.

"She figured out my physical abilities."

"Fargo actually has clearance to know about the Initiative. He found out about them when he was looking up why Beverly Barlowe was in Sunnydale around then."

"Huh. Okay, so Fargo has one half and Jo has the other half," Vi said. "You know they're going to compare notes."

Sighing, Willow said, "Yeah. But -"

Something Jo said caught her attention. "- redheaded friend who's a computer genius. She's carrying a first aid kit with her that's probably able to do anything short of organ transplants, and judging by her scars, she's been in life-or-death fights more than once." After a few seconds, she added, "Carter, I believe this woman is Batman." Willow burst out laughing as Jo said, "Yeah, Carter. I _really _think a 19-year old woman is Batman."

"You realize that makes you Alfred, right?" Vi said.

"Weren't you paying attention? 'Red-headed computer genius friend. That makes me Barbara Gordon. What?" She'd just heard Jo invite Sheriff Carter to join them. "Jo? What are you doing?"

"Carter knows something's going on."

Vi said, "So do all those people outside the door and we're not letting them in on –"

"That's my call," Fargo said. "I agree, but –"

"Your call? Our secret," Willow said.

"Our?" Jo said, looking at Willow.

"My company," Fargo said. But before Willow or Vi could say anything, Fargo opened the door and ordered everyone standing outside to get back to work. When the door closed, he said to Willow, "Good enough?"

"Good enough." This really wasn't a pissing contest.

Meanwhile, Vi was still arguing with Jo. "We can trust Carter."

"This isn't about that. This is about whether we want to make it four people in Eureka who know about us."

"Vi –"

"What?"

"The Sheriff already knows something's up and he seems like the kind of guy who, if we shut him out, will keep picking at it. We've lost this one." Besides, Sheriff Carter was the Sheriff of this town. Eureka. So obviously he knew how to keep secrets. "Jo?"

"Yo!"

"Go ahead and bring the Sheriff in. But that's it, okay?"

"Okay," she said, and went back to the phone call.

Fargo, in the meantime, had caught something. "Four? You're not counting yourselves, or that would be five; so who?" Before Willow could answer, Fargo said, "And if you tell me it's Parrish, you'd better close your ears because I'm going to scream louder than you've ever heard anyone scream in your life."

"It's not Parrish. Whoever that is," Willow said.

"Yeah. It's a guy named Taggart."

Just hanging up the phone, Jo sputtered out a laugh. "Taggart figured it out? How?"

Vi said, "He said he recognized a hunter when he saw one."

XxXxX

"He recognized . . . a hunter?" Douglas Fargo said. "In what way are you a hunter?"

"Yeah," Jo said. "Is that where those scars come from?"

"Would you mind if we only told this once?" Willow asked. "It'll save time and energy. Right now, the two of you each have about half the story.

Fargo said, "All right. It shouldn't take Sheriff Carter more than another fifteen minutes or so to get here. Jo?"

"Sure, I guess," Jo said.

Then Fargo went over and opened the security office door – and about half the people from earlier were still standing around outside. "I thought I told you all to get back to work," he said firmly.

"We're done for the day, Fargo," a mocking voice said. Parrish, of course. The man may have softened enough to not give him a hard time over anything connected with Holly - and even to help him with it -but that didn't actually make him a nice guy. Fargo would have said it didn't make him a human being, but that theory had been overturned when the DNA proved otherwise. "So we have nothing better to do right now."

"Jo?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to need you to do me a favor. If, in about two minutes, the area near this door isn't clear of everyone who doesn't have legitimate business somewhere nearby, I'd like you to have Security throw them bodily out of the building."

Jo, who had moved up to where she was standing next to Fargo by the end of his speech, said, "Happy to." She put her hands on her hips and glared.

"Oh," Fargo said. "By the way. The conversation we are about to have is high-security. Any attempt to eavesdrop will get you fired, expelled from Eureka, and, if I can arrange it, reduced to your component atoms. Understood?"

A bunch of sullen "understoods" followed and people left, some quickly, some slowly. Parrish made a point of being the last one to leave, but he left. He turned to Vi and Willow. "Any problems taking this up to my office?"

"None," Vi said.

"And bringing Taggart in?"

"Huh?" Jo said. "He already knows what's going on."

"Yeah," Fargo said, "But he's not sworn to silence."

Jo laughed. "Fargo, this _is_ Taggart we're talking about. Sure, he's a genius, like everyone else around here, but remember, this is a guy who believes in Santa Claus. If he starts telling stories about super-strong women who's going to believe him?"

"He's eccentric, Jo; he's not certifiable." Then he looked at Willow and Vi. "Still, as you said earlier, this is your secret. Do you trust Taggart to protect it?"

Willow looked at Vi. "You know him better than we do," Willow said. "Is he in the habit of blabbing?"

"He'll talk your ear off about his latest theory," Jo said, "And do _not_ get him started on Sasquatches. But stuff people tell him in confidence? He's pretty good about that."

"Okay," Willow said. "So, since you're leaving it up to us, we say, let's catch up with Taggart later, then. No point in making everyone wait even longer." Fargo noticed something; too bad he couldn't compare notes with Jo, because he was wondering if she'd noticed that Vi might be Batman, but Willow Rosenberg definitely seemed to be in charge.

Hmmm. Maybe a better comparison was _Batman Beyond_.

"Alright then," he said. "Let's go."

XxXxX

The halls and Rotunda were about what they should have been for this time of day. Global Dynamics was open 24-7, but quitting time was quitting time, and a lot of people took advantage of that.

On her way to Fargo's office, she hung back for a second and called Zane.

"Hey. Look. I don't know if you were planning to do anything with me tonight – you're making a few assumptions there, buster - but I'm about to be caught up in a meeting with Fargo and Carter. Something high-security; I don't have all the details yet." No kidding. "Anyway, I don't know how long this is going to go – sure. Go ahead. See you later."

Then she hurried ahead to catch up with the other three. She caught the tail end of Fargo telling Larry, " – Carter in when he gets here, and then you can leave." Willow and Vi must have already been in Fargo's office.

"Right, Mr. Fargo."

Carter got there about ten minutes later; in the meantime, Fargo and Vi had had a quiet and intense discussion about Holly and her life inside and outside of Eureka. Fargo seemed to have adjusted to Vi's looking so remarkably like her aunt. She'd thought resemblances like that only happened on bad TV shows, but Zane had pointed out that there were plenty of celebrity impersonators out there – near-identical twins weren't nearly as common as on TV, but they did happen. So Vi being a dead ringer for her aunt – and she reminded herself to never use that phrase out loud – was unlikely but hardly impossible.

She and Willow had busied themselves talking about their workdays.

When Carter walked in, Fargo shut the door, pressed a couple of buttons and said, "Okay, we're secure."

For about thirty seconds there was silence, with Willow, Vi, Fargo and her all looking at each other, and Carter getting more and more and frustrated until he finally said, "If I wanted to watch people standing around looking at each other, I didn't need to come here to do it. What's going on?"

"Your company," Willow said to Fargo.

"Your secret," Fargo said. After Willow gestured at the wall, Fargo said, "I can't reveal that without getting into trouble. You can."

"What secret?" Carter said, mildly irritated. "Not half an hour ago I get an emergency call from you, Fargo, telling me that Jo's having a knockdown drag-out in her security office with someone, then Jo tells me she thinks Vi over there's Batman, and now no one wants to say anything. So would someone just tell me what the hell is going on here?"

Willow finally said, "Okay, then. Deep end it is. Vampires are real. Magic is real. I'm a practicing witch, and Vi here is a vampire Slayer."

Most of this took Vi by surprise. Vampires? Still, if she hadn't seen what Vi could do, it would have been a lot less believable.

Fargo was simply slowly nodding his head.

And Carter? His reaction was, "Well, if all you needed was someone to haul these two off to the loony bin, why didn't you say so?"


	16. Indistinguishable from Technology

Fargo had gestured for Willow and Vi to go ahead while he talked to his receptionist and Jo lingered in the Rotunda, apparently to call her boyfriend. That gave Willow and Vi a few minutes to commune with each other. Willow cast a minor spell – if anyone was watching or listening in, it would make it look like they were just standing there – and when she nodded Vi said, "Some secret agents we are, huh?"

Willow restrained the urge to laugh because now, not really the time, and they didn't want to look frozen when Jo or Fargo came into the room. "The one thing they _don't_ know is why we're really here. And we don't want to give _that_ away."

"They're going to ask why we came here."

"We came because we wanted to investigate Aunt Holly's death," Vi said.

"And you yelled and were angry about it for a couple of days because . . .?"

Vi said, "I'm a really good actress?" Willow shook her head. "Okay. You're right. We . . . came here because we heard of all the weirdness and we wanted to see if it had a magical cause?"

"Weirdness?" Willow asked.

"Major-league. Like, rivaling Sunnydale, only without quite as much malice. Beverly Barlowe and Senator Wen aside. Huh."

"Huh?" Willow echoed. That had definitely been a thoughtful grunt.

Voices. Fargo and Jo were coming. Vi quickly said, "When we're done with the secret, follow my lead."

Willow canceled the spell and said, "Okay."

Fargo approached Vi and said quietly, "While we wait for Sheriff Carter, would it be okay if we talked about Holly?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like – well, you know what I mean – that."

They walked over to the desk. In the meantime, Jo came over and said, "So, how was your day?"

"Very, very weird," Willow said, grinning. "Yours?"

"Weird doesn't begin to describe it." And then they talked about what they'd done that day that wasn't connected with either her or Willow.

And then Sheriff Carter came in and it was time to get the show on the road. After she finally explained it – 16 words, let's see Giles try to top _that_ – the sheriff's initial reaction was to say with a big grin, "Well, if all you needed was someone to haul these two off to the loony bin, why didn't you say so?"

"It's not crazy, Carter," Jo said. Fargo said something similar.

The sheriff sighed and shook his head. "Great. Now we have a crazy virus to match the dumb virus." He pulled out his phone. "I'd better call Henry."

Jo laughed. "Carter, you're really going to tell me after all the stuff you've seen that you have a problem with magic?"

"Doesn't it violate all kinds of scientific rules, though? Oh! Like getting something out of nothing! I know you can't do that." The Sheriff seemed proud of himself, and he was right, if oversimplifying; but that rule actually did apply to magic.

"Magic doesn't, Sheriff," Willow said. "It pulls the energy it needs from the earth – or the caster – or other people or things, though pulling energy from people, pretty much evil, and I don't like to do that."

"Well, that's good to know," the Sheriff said.

"Am I going to have to prove it to you?"

The sheriff was nodding his head. "Yeah. Yeah, I think you will."

Figuring something like this would happen, Willow was ready with "old reliable," and telekinetically moved the nameplate from Fargo's desk to right in front of the sheriff. He said, "Okay, that's a . . . bit unusual, but I've seen similar things before. Hell, Fargo, you know: You were jerked the ceiling by some effect that was reversing gravity."

Fargo said, "True, but there's nothing like that here today."

"How do you know? This is Eureka. There are hundreds of things that can go wrong at any time."

In Eureka, apparently, the inverse of Clarke's Law stood: "Any magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology."

Given his experiences, and the kind of weird things that apparently happened every day around here, Willow, while frustrated, understood where the sheriff was coming from." Sheriff," she said, "Tell me what you want. Do you want me to change this into an animal?"

A glint entered his eyes. "Yes. But I want it to be a kind of animal you can't find anywhere around here. And Fargo?"

"Yes?"

"This isn't some kind of organic goop masquerading as a nameplate, or a Transformer or anything, is sit?"

"No. Just a normal nameplate," Fargo said.

"Thanks. Willow? Go ahead."

The sheriff's request had Willow for a second – GD had a fairly large number of animals in residence, although they refrained from experiments that intentionally harmed them. If she conjured up, say, a platypus, how did she know that someone (Taggart?) wasn't doing something with one?

But then she had it. Lowering the nameplate to the floor, she concentrated –

And abruptly, instead of the nameplate, there was a brownish-gray bird about three feet tall in the office. It looked around and began squawking and running around wildly.

Fargo's jaw dropped. The sheriff said, "Holy crap. Is that what I think it is?"

"What is it?" Jo asked. "Some weird kind of turkey?"

"That," Fargo said quietly, "Is a_ raphus cucullatus._There hasn't been a living one seen in well over 300 years."

The Sheriff was grinning. "C'mon, Fargo, can't you just say dodo?"

XxXxX

Magic? Magic didn't exist. Everyone knew that. Well, everyone but Taggart. Floating Fargo's nameplate through the air, or even spinning it in front of Jack's face, still didn't mean that it did. It was cool and all, but Jack had seen things like that around here before –

Okay. Changing the nameplate into an animal would work. Just had to make sure she wasn't dragging in an animal from somewhere else.

The nameplate was on the floor.

And now it was a dodo.

Okay – magic? But still, here was the evidence. One final question, just to be sure: "Fargo," he said. "Is GD running any Jurassic-Park like experiments? Bringing back dinosaurs or mammoths or something?"

Fargo, who was busy scratching the head of the panicky bird and doing a decent job of calming it down, said "No. Bringing back long-extinct animals is one of the things we're forbidden from doing." After a second, h added, "Nothing in there about recently extinct animals, though. I'll have a talk with the biology labs."

Jo said, "Yeah. Imagine the drumsticks you could get off one of those things."

"Can I keep her?" Fargo asked. "If anyone asks, we got some dodo genetic material and finally managed to develop one."

"The spell should be permanent unless someone reverses it," Willow said, leaning against the wall.

"You okay?" Vi asked. "Here. Lean on me."

Willow said, "The spell took a lot out of me – changing an inanimate object into a living one requires a great deal of energy, which is why I'm not busy repopulating the North Atlantic with great auks. So sure, go ahead. Sheriff? Are you convinced?"

"You just brought a dodo back to life. Yeah. I'm convinced." Demanding further proof at this point would have made him look like an idiot.

"Okay. Good. That'll make the rest of this easier. Fargo knows some of this, and Jo knows some of it." She then spent about five minutes giving them a history of vampires, and magic, and the supernatural, and how Vi was some kind of mystic warrior with superhuman strength who fought the vampires.

"So . . ." Fargo said when she was done. "Why'd you come here?"

And Vi said, "Well, someone in our organization noticed a lot of weirdness coming from up here, and we were kind of asked to look into it."

"You could have just visited for that, though," Jack said. "You didn't need to actually join Global."

"We wanted to," Willow said. "We were both recruited in high school, and honestly, if this business of saving the world every once in a while hadn't gotten in the way."

"Their credentials are legitimate," Fargo said, still petting the now-calm dodo. "Dr. Peterson or one of the computer people would've mentioned if they were faking. I think I'll call her "Martina." He smiled at Vi.

Vi gave a small smile right back. "Aunt Holly would've appreciated that. Anyway," she said, "We were worried that maybe there was some kind of magic weirdness or maybe some Big Bad behind all of the problems."

"Big Bad?" Jack asked. It seemed obvious, but he knew as much about this world as he did about quantum physics.

Willow said, "Major villain. Someone who wants to take over the world, or end it, basically."

"Don't you ever watch _Freedom_?" Fargo said. "That's what the Chain called himself. And The One-Eyed Man, definite Big Bad."

Of course, Jack had never seen that show in his life. Zoe'd been a fan, and Fargo had named SARAH after its star, but that was about it, for him.

"Senator Wen would count. So would Beverly Barlowe," Vi said, saving Jack the trouble of having to answer Fargo. "And Willow and I were talking, and we had an idea, now that you know about magic."

Obviously this had something to do with either Wen, Barlowe, or both. "And what would that idea be?" Jack asked.

"We can track them down for you."

"Can you?" Jo said. "I mean, obviously magic exists, and Vi there could beat me in a fight if she tried, but is that kind of thing even possible?"

Willow, after a blink-and-he'd-ve-missed it glare at Vi, said, "Sure. Tracking spells are easy enough, if you have something that belonged to the person. Do you have any of their stuff here?" What was the glare for?

Fargo said, "A lot of Beverly's stuff. Most of it's high-security, but I don't see what the problem would be with giving you some of her clothes. Senator Wen, though . . . she never lived in Eureka and I don't think we have anything that belonged to her. Sheriff? Jo?"

"I can't think of anything," Jack said. "I can ask around."

"Don't tell anyone what we need it for," Fargo said. The bird was now completely calm. No wonder it had been so easy for people to kill the things.

"I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot. 'Hi, do you have any of Senator Wen's things? Yeah, we need it for a magic spell.' Then I'd be the one people wanted to haul off to the loony bin. Sorry about that, by the way." Oh, there was something there, but if they were crazy, this wasn't proof. And honestly despite the magic and vampires they seemed a whole lot saner than most of the people in this town.  
Of course, since he'd signed up for the job of bailing them out of a disaster once a week or so, what did that say about him?

Willow shrugged. "Nothing to apologize for, Sheriff. It's a natural reaction. And you're a lot easier to convince than a lot of people."

"Jo?" said Fargo.

"Nothing I know about. I'll ask around too."

"Are you sure it'll work?" Jack asked. "This tracking thingy, I mean?"

"Are you going to need proof of that too?" Vi asked.

Jo said, "It's a good idea, actually. No offense, but I wouldn't want to put a lot of time and effort into this and then come up with nothing."

"Fair enough," Willow said. "But it'll have to be tomorrow. I'm a little drained from today."

"Fine," Fargo said. "Willow, you're off duty tomorrow while we do the test. Are you going to need Vi?"

"I'd like to have her around for the actual tracking, but tomorrow, no."

"What are you thinking?" Jo asked.

"I'll let you know tomorrow morning," Fargo said. "Nothing dangerous. Just get here as early as you can. Thanks." Jo nodded.

"Okay," Fargo said. "I think we're done. I'm going to get Martina here down to the zoology lab to find out what I'm going to have to feed her."

"And I actually have to get to the computer lab myself." Willow held up an official GD laptop. "Spent the day trying to break in."

"Did you?" Fargo asked.

"Yeah. But it was a small hole and I'll get it closed as soon as possible."

"Thanks," Fargo said. "Vi, if you want to wait here for her to get back, we can talk some more about Holly."

"I'd like that," she said.

"And if that's all, I'll see you here tomorrow morning," Jo said.

"Me too," Jack said. When everyone looked at him, he said, "If you think I'm going to miss this – naaah, we've already had that conversation. Good night, everybody."


	17. Garlicky Root Beer

The night was quiet. Jo caught up with Zane, dodged his attempts to get her to tell him what had happened, and had a good night's sleep.

The next morning, she got up and out per request, munching an egg sandwich SARAH made for her, and made it to work a half hour earlier than normal.

Fargo was already there, waiting in the Rotunda. Martina was standing right next to him, wandering off occasionally but coming when called. She was very curious. It said something about life in Eureka that an honest-to-God extinct animal wasn't drawing nearly the crowd she would have almost anywhere else. People were startled, at times, and inquisitive, but no one stopped for more than a few minutes.  
As Jo walked up to him, he said, "I want you to get lost."

"Um, you're the one who asked me to come in early."

He said with a sheepish grin, "Yeah, could've phrased that better. I want you to go hide somewhere for the day. Don't tell me where; don't tell anyone where. Call me when you get wherever. Oh, and leave your jacket here."

She got it. This was to test Willow's tracking spell. "Any restrictions?"

"Don't hide anywhere restricted," Fargo said. "Or anywhere dangerous."

"I'll need bus fare if I'm going to have to leave Eureka," Jo said, grinning.

"You know what I mean," Fargo said.

"Sure," Jo said. "This should be fun."

And she turned around and walked back to her car. On her way towards the edge of town, she called Taggart and explained that she needed some help, and to meet her on County Road 2 about a mile outside of town.

Jo parked along a dirt track and started walking. Taggart showed up twenty minutes later. "I know what Vi and Willow can do," she said.

He broke into a big grin. "Do you, now. How'd you tumble to that?"

"Vi beat up a jaguar – a virtual jaguar," she added, noting the look of disgust briefly flash across Taggart's face. "And then she beat me in hand-to-hand."

"I knew the lass was good, but I didn't know she was that good," Taggart said.

"She is. If I ever fight her for real I'm going to need ranged weapons, lead time, and help. Then Willow changed the nameplate on Fargo's desk into a dodo. It's now Fargo's pet."

If the grin on his face got any broader, the top half would fall off. "A live dodo! Oh, I have to see that."

"Ask Fargo," Jo said. "I'm sure he'll be glad to show you. She already seems tame."

Shaking his head sadly, Taggart said, "That was got the poor buggers extinct in the first place. They'd never seen a human before and came right up, out of curiosity. Let the sailors just walk up and club 'em over the head. Never had a chance to evolve survival instinct. That's why people say they were stupid, by the way. But they weren't. They were just naïve."

All very interesting, but she hadn't called Taggart here to get a lecture on the dodo. "Thanks, but not what I need you for. Willow's going to track me using magic."

"Alright."

"I want you to use your wilderness skills to make it as hard as you can to find me. I don't want her being able to track me by any other method."

"Where'll you be hiding yourself?"

"In the playground in the small park at the end of Lavoisier." The park backed right against the forest.

"Sounds like fun. Alright. That's about a bit over a mile through mostly forest with the occasional grassy clearing. Let's get cracking."

They began their slow match through the woods.

XxXxX

"What's that, Jared?"

"It's a device that can either increase or decrease the friction coefficient of rocks and minerals. Figure it'll help miners and archaeologists in their digs."

"Cool! Let's try it out!"

XxXxX

Willow had shown the techs who were still in the computer lab what she'd done to break through – they'd noticed her decoy and her secondary decoy quickly enough – and said that the Director had a special assignment for her but that she'd try again using the same method to see how well they'd plugged the hole.

Then she tried to break in as the Scarlet Witch that night, but couldn't. The other people in the computer lab were really on the ball, tonight, but it didn't really matter; Vi's ploy was getting them what they wanted anyway, so this was just to divert any suspicion.

She'd only been annoyed at Vi because she hadn't expected that to be the lead she was following; she'd tamped down her glare almost immediately but thought the Sheriff had caught it. He was the Sheriff for a reason, and based on the weird incidents vi had told her about, it was a damn good reason. Best to be squeaky clean for a while.

It also left them with the problem of what to do when they _found_ Beverly Barlowe. It wouldn't do them any good to track the woman down only to have her be immediately taken into custody; they needed to ask her about how to help Buffy and Dawn, first. And adding Senator Wen complicated matters, but it wasn't a complication she was going to complain about. The woman had killed Vi's Aunt Holly, after all.

Anyway, the next morning she showed up at Global Dynamics at her normal time; Sheriff Carter was waiting in the Rotunda. "Hey, Willow," he said. "Fargo's in his office. He would've been out here himself but it turns out Martina's friendly but she isn't exactly housebroken."

"Pooped all over the floor?"

"Uh-huh. And fortunately, dung detail is one of the things that _isn't_ in the Sheriff's job description. You ready?"

As they walked in she said, "You don't have to come along."

"I really do," he said.

"Why? You're not still skeptical –?"

"Of magic? Naaah. Of your ability to track? Maybe a little."

Willow wasn't insulted, though she had the feeling the man wasn't telling quite the whole truth. She had to be well above suspicion – just in case.

Larry waved them into Fargo's office; he was on the phone saying, "Please come up with some way I can handle this. Thanks." As he hung up, he noticed them and said, "Martina. Still trying to figure out whether she can be housebroken or if I need to figure out how to rig something that'll let her out into the backyard when I'm not at home."

"So you know what to feed her?" Willow asked.

"Fruit, for the most part. We're trying to keep her to the fruit that was available on Mauritius in the 1600s and so far she's not having any problems."

"Good."

"Anyway," he said, "That isn't why you're here,"

"Yeppers. I'm here to prove I can track with magic."

"Good," Fargo said, reaching down to the floor. "This is Jo's jacket. Find her."

"Any time limit?"

"If it gets to the point where I think you're using a search algorithm rather than your magic, I'm going to declare it a failure."

Willow nodded. "Fair enough."

"And I'll make sure she doesn't, you know, call Taggart or break out some kind of super-tracker device thingy," the sheriff said.

"You mean like a GPS?" Fargo asked.

Sheepishly, the sheriff said, "Yeah. Like one of those."

Willow had expected something like this, though not necessarily that she was going to be tracking down Jo, so, she'd brought a lot of the material she'd need for a quality tracking spell with her. Still, some of it was kind of smelly, so she'd need to do this outside. She said as much.

"So, outside?"

"Yes, please," Willow said, taking Jo's jacket.

They headed to the parking lot.

XxXxX

"Jared?"

"What is it, Jaison?"

"So when are we getting around to testing this thing?"

"We have to find a good-sized chunk of rock first."

"There's dirt all around us, man!"

"Dirt isn't rock – I got it!"

XxXxX

Jack Carter really had no idea what to expect when Willow cast her spell. Sure, there hadn't been any fancy pyrotechnics when she'd made the dodo, but in the back of his mind he still had the idea that magic equaled flashy.

This was not particularly flashy. Oh, sure, there was a small puff of smoke and a strong odor of garlicky root beer, but no big light show.

"I was expecting something . . . less scientific," he said when she was done. Fargo'd led them to a distant corner of the property, out of view of most of the parking lot and the building. No point in explaining what they were doing if they didn't have to.

"Magic is scientific, sheriff," she said. "I can't get something from nothing, and the amounts here matter. Not enough garlic and all I'd get is a vague sense of where Ms. Lupo is; too much and I'd end up mentally overwhelmed. There's a tolerance level, but it's not huge."

"Okay. You ready to go, then?"

"Yup. I can find her. Give you a call when we do, Director." Fargo nodded and they all walked to the parking lot, and as Fargo peeled off Willow added, "Could you do me a favor and drive me? I can drive while doing this but I'd rather be able to give my full attention to the spell than half to the spell and half to the road."

"Sure," Jack said. "Just to let you know: My jeep gets destroyed on a semi-regular basis."

"Still, yours, super-sciency, I'm betting. Mine? 2004 Kia. Unenhanced. And the jeep may be crushed. You, not so much."

"Good point. Let's go."

XxXxX

"What kind of rock are we going to find around here?"

"Over here."

"Yeah. You know, I forgot about this."

"That's because it's so . . . low-tech, dude. The equipment doesn't do anything; it just sits there. Anyway, there's our rock."

"Sand? What's going to happen if you reduce the friction coefficient of sand?"

"Quicksand without water. Watch."

X

Taggart had left about five minutes ago, taking a different path back; it had taken Jo about twenty minutes to get this far, with him covering her trail. The playground wasn't used much, which was a real shame. She had no problem with high-tech stuff, but low-tech stuff could be a hell of a lot of fun, too.

She had a couple of bottles of water with her, and her cell phone; she'd already called Fargo, who'd said that Willow and Carter were already on the way. So, for the moment she pretty much had nothing to do but surf the internet and stare at the scenery. Action girl she was, but she could stand some quiet time if it meant being able to track down Beverly Barlowe and Senator Wen.

Huh. Couple of kids were coming. They couldn't see her where she was, leaning against the back of the jungle gym while sitting on the sand. She'd picked this place because it wasn't used very often; if the kids saw her –

What was that about quicksand?

Oh, shit –

XxXxX

Note: It wouldn't be a trip to Eureka without something scientific being misused, breaking, or having unintended consequences.


	18. Sand Trap

Jo quickly tried to stand up, but she couldn't find a foothold. She crashed back down to the sand, her back slamming into the back of the jungle gym. Her phone went flying and ended up sinking under the sand like she'd dropped it in water. As she began sinking – how deep was this sand? – she yelled out, "Hey! Help!" and grabbed the nearest bar on the gym and held on for dear life. As she looked around to see how she could use it to pull herself up, two teenagers, maybe 14-15, came running around the edge of the playground.

One of them, holding some kind of device, said, "Holy crap! Sorry, we didn't realize anyone was in there."

The other one said, "Reverse it, man! Reverse it!"

"I'm trying! I'm trying!"

"Let me try!"

"No, it's –" it was cut off because, just like her phone, the device dropped, landed in the sand, and vanished without a trace. She swore, then twisted her body until both arms were grabbing the jungle gym, and pulled herself up so she was now hanging from one of the bars. Then, carefully, she swung over until she was standing on the center platform.

This wasn't made easier by the fact that the jungle gym itself was shaking and wobbling because of whatever the two boys had done, though at least it wasn't plummeting downward.

Yet.

In the meantime, the boy who'd originally been holding the device had reached in after it; he'd started to fall in – how the hell deep was this sand—when his friend grabbed him and pulled him back. Then he looked up at Jo and said, "Are you okay?"

Right then the gym sank about three inches. This still left her about eight feet off the ground, but since it was set dead center in the playground that only delayed trouble. She was good, but she couldn't leap the twenty feet it'd take to get clear of this sand trap. She wouldn't even try without a running start, which she couldn't get at the moment.

And not five minutes ago she'd been complaining about the lack of action on this assignment. When would she ever learn?

"For right now, yeah," she told the boys. "What are your names?" The tall white kid identified himself as Jared, the shorter black kid as Jaison. "Okay. Whose house is closer?" Jaison's was. "Okay. I'm Jo. Go call Sheriff Carter and tell him what's going on. And try to find a rope or something." The gym sank another few inches. "Run!"

Jaison ran.

XxXxX

Willow was guiding Jack Carter through the streets of Eureka fairly quickly. Once or twice he had to tell her that they couldn't turn in this or that direction, because the street ahead was still in a state of disrepair (with the number of experiments that went kablooey on a regular basis, there was roadwork going on pretty much 24/7/365). She simply nodded and suggested they take the next available turn.

Once they had to backtrack; when Jack asked why, she said, "We're still a few miles away. I'd like to get as close as possible before we have to stop the car and hoof it, and I think we can do better than 2.8 miles."

Five minutes later, they were driving down Harvey between Curie and Lavoisier when, at the same time, Willow said "turn left here" and his phone rang. As he began to turn down Lavoisier, he picked it up. "Hello, Sheriff Carter here."

The guy on the other end – sounded youngish – started babbling."Sheriff? This is Jaison Wallace. Me and my friend Jared were fiddling with this thing he has that reduces the friction coefficient of rocks and minerals and we tried it on the playground at the park at the end of Lavoisier, you know, to try to make some dry quicksand, and –"

"Long story short, Jaison," Jack said.

"There's a woman trapped on the monkey bars," he said. "We lost the device in the sand, and everything in the playground is sinking."

"I'll be right there." He slapped on his siren and told Willow, "Test's canceled. We've got someone trapped here at the end of the block."

"That's where Jo is, Sheriff," she said.

Jack floored it.

XxXxX

Along the way, the Sheriff sent a joint call to a man named Henry Deacon, and Fargo, and filled them in in about thirty seconds. Fargo was mobilizing people and Mr. Deacon said he'd get there as soon as possible.

They screeched to a halt at the end of Lavoisier and the Sheriff jumped out of the car, saying "stay here," to Willow.

Right. Like that was going to work.

Willow got out a couple of seconds later, in time to catch the tail end of his conversation with two excited teenagers: "—couldn't find any rope. Jared thought his Dad's ladder might work –"

"Go get it," the Sheriff said, and the two ran off. Seeing Willow, he said, "This could be dangerous."

"Vampires, Sheriff. I deal with dangerous on a regular basis." Okay, she usually wasn't the one fighting them, but picky, picky. "Besides, I might be able to help." She picked up a rock telekinetically.

"Good point," he said. "Come on."

They ran to the playground, where they could see Jo standing on the top of the apparatus in the middle, holding on to rails with both hands. There were two sliding boards there, and a swingset; the smaller sliding board had nearly disappeared, while the swingset was leaning precariously forward. The bigger sliding board didn't seem affected at all.

"Jo! We're over here."

"We?"

"Me and Willow. The tracking spell was working; we were on our way down Lavoisier when we got, uh, Jaison's call."

"Good. Now how about getting me down from here?"

"Willow?"

She concentrated for a second. She'd moved heavier weights before, but mostly in anger or desperation. Black-eyed Willow was very much not needed at the moment.

Okay, she was never needed, ever again.

Still, Jo's life was at stake here. she tried drawing strength from the Earth, but she got a weird feeling – the energy was shifting and unreliable. Even at top concentration it was like she was shifting from neutral to overdrive and then first gear, all in a matter of seconds. There was plenty of air around, but drawing energy from the air was even harder; no, she'd have to draw it from herself and herself alone.

She began to move Jo, and almost as soon as she was in the air, Jo started shaking as though she were a die in a cup. Regretfully, Willow put her back down. "What happened?" Jo shouted.

"I can't draw enough energy," Willow said. "There's something wrong with the earth."

"Which jibes with what the kids were telling me," the sheriff said.

"If the shit hits the fan," Willow said, "I'll do my absolute best. But I'm not sure enough of my control. I might drop her halfway across."

"Yeah," the sheriff said. "Better hold off, then."

The two boys were running up carrying an extension ladder. A bit down the block, there was a man in a pickup truck and another police vehicle – the latter had to be Deputy Andy, but she didn't recognize the truck.

"Here you go," one of the boys said.

The jungle gym shook and wobbled and listed to the front left. "Hurry it up, please," Jo shouted.

"Not taking it easy," the sheriff shouted back while extending the ladder.

The two vehicles parked; the pickup truck said "Henry's garage," so the guy getting out of the truck carrying a full tool box had to be Henry Deacon, Deputy Andy was right after him. "What's going on?" Henry asked.

Gesturing to the boys, the sheriff said, "They made quicksand without water."

Nodding, Henry looked at the two and said, "What'd you do?" The tone was urgent and firm, but not hostile.

As the boys started to explain, Andy came over and said, "What do you need, boss?"

"We're going to try to extend this ladder out to Jo – whoa!" The smaller sliding board sank to the point that all you could see was the top platform. "How the hell deep is this sand?"

"Two feet," Andy said.

"That sliding board's sunk a lot more than two feet," Jack said.

Henry put something that looked like a high-tech Geiger counter in his toolbox and came over. "Yes, it has, Jack," he said. "Apparently this device the boys built has reduced not only the coefficient of friction for the sand particles, but for the dirt underneath."

"Which is why their device sank immediately, but the bigger things are taking a while," Willow said. "The dirt on the bottom – how deep did it go?"

Henry said, "I'm not – who are you?"

"Willow Rosenberg. Computer tech."

"Okay. I don't know. My scanner's maximum depth is 250 feet and it exceeds even that."

"Holy –" Jack said.

"Yeah. What he said," Willow said. "But the dirt on the bottom, however deep that is, has no place to flow. Smaller, denser objects are going to sink, but larger items with a greater distribution of weight aren't going to go so quickly."

Looking over at the precariously balanced jungle gym, the sheriff said, "Could she just swim out?"

Henry shook his head. "No. The sand and earth may mimic fluid, but it isn't, really. Jo wouldn't possess the same buoyancy in it that she would in water."

"And a helicopter probably wouldn't work," Willow said, "Because the downdraft would blow the sand all over the place and that, probably a good way to make everything else in the playground fall down and probably take Jo with it."

"Good point," Henry said.

"The ladder it is, then. Henry? Could you call Fargo and tell him to hold off on bringing a chopper in? Andy, give me a hand here." Between them they pulled the ladder out to its maximum extension. "Okay, anchor me."

"Will do, boss."

Henry, in the meantime, had sent Jared back home to get the specs for his device – he had those, at least, even if the device itself was currently on its way to the center of the Earth – and was making the phone call.

With Andy holding the sheriff firmly by the ankles, the sheriff knelt by the edge of the playground and then began to lean forward. "Okay," he said. "Hand me the ladder."

Willow and Jaison each picked up an end and the sheriff placed it on the tiny bit of ground in front of him, then yelled, "Ready?" to Jo.

"More than!" she shouted back.

Without saying anything, he leaned until he was parallel with the ground and forced the ladder forward towards the jungle gym. At that moment, it shuddered one more time, while the swingset toppled but did not sink. The bigger sliding board had still barely moved, although the sand under it appeared to be very slowly draining away towards the jungle gym.

There were more cars coming down the road now.

The ladder was at full extension – and _just_ reached the jungle gym. It wouldn't be stable, but at this point they couldn't wait for stable.

Huh. The one sliding board wasn't falling. Why? While Jo hurried to try to get the ends as stable as possible – which wasn't very – Willow ran around to the side nearest to it and tried to draw some strength from the Earth.

There it was. Still a little wonky – like drinking watered-down coffee, not that she got to drink coffee very often, because, after all, this was what she was like uncaffeinated – but a whole lot better than the near-nothing she was getting when she was standing near the sheriff.

They had the ladder braced as best as they could. Jo started crawling across it. Fargo had come himself, with a whole passel of people from GD, security and scientists, Vi too -

And the ladder fell.

About an inch. Telekinetically, Willow caught it.

Jo looked down and then at her, and Willow mouthed, "Hurry."

Jo hurried, crawling across the ladder like a pack of hungry lions was chasing her. An eternity and twenty seconds later, a couple of the security guards pulled her clear of the sand.

Willow released the ladder as the sheriff and Andy pulled it up.

When she walked back around, Willow said, "Nice work, Sheriff."

Sheriff Carter was no fool. He nodded and said, "Thanks," then when Willow got closer said, "I think you passed."

Like there'd been any doubt.


	19. Thank God and Willow Rosenberg

Vi had had no idea what was going on when, while she was in the middle of making sure her giant hogweed plants were healthy and getting all the nutrition they needed, Fargo called down and told Dr. Peterson to send her up immediately.

Fargo had explained the situation when she got up to the lobby. Amazingly, while everyone was hurrying, no one seemed to be panicking.

On the way, Fargo'd said, "That's because it's early yet. Wait till we see whether this thing has the potential to send Eureka plummeting to the center of the Earth. Then you'll see panic. I may be the one leading the way."

But when they got there, the immediate crisis was coming to an end.

Vi watched Jo crawl across the ladder – and when the ladder slipped and seemed to catch itself, saw Willow at the far side of the playground concentrating hard. She wondered why Willow hadn't just moved Jo to safety before the crowd got there, but knew there had to be a good reason.

She stayed back until Jo was clear of the playground, then made her way through the crowd towards her, Jack, and Willow; Slayer reflexes came in handy. Slayer strength? Not so much – she really didn't want to shove anyone back into the sand. She got there as Jo was thanking both Willow and Jack for the rescue.

Behind them, the gym in the middle was sinking quickly, and security was dragging the swingset, which had fallen onto the edge, clear. Deputy Andy was clearing the area of gawkers, while two boys maybe 4-5 years younger than she was were showing some papers to Fargo and a man she'd never met.

"—this qualifies as passing," Jack said as she walked up.

With a sly grin on her face, Jo said, "Well, technically she didn't find me . . ." then got serious and said, "But yeah. I'll go along with that. You hadn't been so close, things could have been a lot worse."

"Glad you're okay," Vi said. As Jo nodded her thanks, Vi asked Willow, "You okay?"  
"A bit drained, but, you know, nothing that'll keep me from working, or tracking a certain red-headed psychiatrist."

"Good," Vi said, relieved.

Fargo and the man with him came up. "Nice work, Jack," the man said.  
Jack smiled. "Thanks, Henry." Ah. Henry Deacon. Vi'd heard some of the other botanists talking about him.

"Did it seem to you as though the ladder was floating in midair for a few seconds, though?" Henry asked.

Jo said, "I was a little busy not dying at the time."

"So was I," Jack said. "Well, not the not dying part. You know what I mean."

"I didn't see anything," Willow said. "I was looking right at it."

"And I was a little far away," Vi said. Though she'd seen exactly that, if she hadn't known what to look for, she wouldn't have been able to see it from the distance she was at, either.

"Yes," Henry said. "Ms – Rosenberg, was it?"

"Call me Willow."

"Right. Willow," he said, "Why did you walk over to the other side of the playground? What did you see?"

"The big sliding board. Look at it. It hasn't moved. Some of the sand underneath it's drained away, but it's still anchored. I was trying to see if maybe Jo could jump to it instead, of the trick with the ladder didn't work. I don't think the lowering of the friction coefficient extended quite that far."

Nodding, Henry said, "Not a bad idea. Although, based on my readings, it did reach where you were, just at significantly diminished strength. Not nearly enough to cause the dry quicksand effect that trapped Jo."

"So," Jack said, 'No chance of the ground under our feet suddenly turning to mush?"

"No," Henry said. "The surface area range was quite limited; the reason it extended so far downward was that young Jared over there – he pointed to the two boys who'd been showing him the papers –" snuck into his father's home workshop to borrow a battery and ended up using one that was far more powerful than the machine could really handle. It would have overloaded within a minute if it hadn't fallen into the sand. Otherwise, it's quite a remarkable device. The implications for archaeology alone –"

"And this is where I tend to slowly walk away," Jack said. "If there's no further danger, my job's just become crowd control."

"The crowd seems to be pretty controlled already," Vi said, looking out. Deputy Andy had done a pretty good job of getting anyone not connected to the situation to head home. Which still left a few dozen people mingling around, but at least they seemed to be mingling around in an orderly fashion.

"So it does," Jack said. "Henry, let me know if there's anything else I need to worry about."

"I always do," Henry said.

"Boys?" Jack said to Jared and his friend. "Come with me."

"Are we in trouble?"

"Oh yeah," Jack said. "Willow? You good for finding your own way back to GD?"

"I think I can catch a ride," she said.

"Good. Talk to you later."

XxXxX

Jo Lupo hadn't even considered jumping to the sliding board – probably because it would have required climbing up, perching on a narrow pipe without anything to steady herself with, leaping about twelve feet, and landing on a fairly narrow metal strip, all while the ground underneath her was doing its damnedest to suck her and the jungle gym downward towards the center of the Earth. It would have been a good backup plan, but they hadn't needed one, thank God and Willow Rosenberg.

Fargo debriefed her for a few minutes – nothing too formal, although he did ask her to write a report – and briefly, quietly discussed Willow.

"I'd say she passes with flying colors," she said. "She's why they were only a couple of minutes away. Plus she probably saved my life."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The ladder slipped and she held it up the same way she held up the rock in your office."

"Did anyone notice?"

"Henry saw something, but me, Carter and Willow tried to throw him off track."

"Good," he said. "If he asks me, I'll do the same. In the meantime, I want you checked out, just in case."

"Uh-uh. I'm fine."

"Just to be on the safe side. I want you completely healthy when we go after Beverly."

Dammit, that made sense. "Okay. How soon are you thinking?"

"As soon as Willow's up for it – tomorrow, if she can."

"Fine by me," Jo said. "Hey, by the way – where's Zane? I'm surprised he didn't come."

Sheepishly, Fargo said, "We couldn't track him down. I left word down at the computer lab to tell him as soon as they saw him."

That made sense. Zane was a genius, and she loved him, but when the man was focused on something, sometimes he forgot about trivial things like sleep, food, and his girlfriend. She said as much, then added, "Oh. And I'm also going to need another phone. My old one is now plummeting to the center of the earth."

"Oh, it's not going to go that far down. It'll certainly stop before it gets to the upper mantle."

"And that's how far down?"

"No more than forty kilometers or so."

"Fargo, that's still close enough for it to count as lost forever."

He nodded. "Good point."

"Okay. I'll collect Willow and Vi, head to my car, and drive back to GD, where I will go get checked out. On the off chance I collapse on the way to my car, I'll have a witch and someone who could carry me to a doctor on her back with me. Good enough?"

"Yeah." Henry was calling for Fargo. "I have to go. We need to figure out how to handle this."

"Electric fence?" Jo said.

Fargo said, "Not quite the direction I was going, but not a bad idea. See you back at GD."

XxXxX

Jo came up while Willow and Vi were talking and said, "You guys lost your ride. Come on. I'll take you back in my car, so let's go for a walk in the woods." Then she took off.

Willow and Vi had to hustle to catch up to her. "Not that I have any problems with a nice, relaxing nature walk, because, you know, fresh air, sunshine, and we probably won't be bothered by the sasquatches, but why?" Willow asked.

"Because this is the shortest route back to my car." She shook her head. "I had Taggart break my trail in case you were just an excellent tracker or detective. Apparently I wasted my time and his."

"No," Willow said, "It was a good idea and probably would have worked if I hadn't been using magic. How long a walk is this?"

"About a mile," Jo said. "Is that a problem?"

Tired, but not that tired, Willow said, "No. I'm good. How about you?"

"I think I sprained my shoulder pulling myself up onto the jungle gym," Jo said. "But just cuts and bruises otherwise." By Willow's reading, Jo was the kind of person who would say "cuts and bruises" if she'd had her throat cut. It was a warrior-ish mentality, and you practically had to beat into Slayers that accelerated healing didn't mean you could simply ignore every injury that didn't leave you unconscious or with a severed limb.

Jo kept up a brisk pace, but not so brisk that they couldn't talk as they walked. The conversation turned to plans to track down Beverly Barlowe.

"I think I'm good doing it tomorrow," Willow said.

Jo said, "Good. I'll have my security forces ready."

"Capture, not kill," Vi said tightly. Her normally upbeat mood had turned grim, not that Willow could blame her.

"Don't worry," Jo said. "She has a lot to answer for."

More than she thought. "Any luck finding anything Senator Wen left in town?" she asked, not so much trying to lighten the subject as keep it somewhat clinical.

Jo said, "Not that I know. Of course, I've been busy doing other things for the last few hours."

She didn't sound upset – not at Willow, at any rate – so Willow said, "Yeah. Of course. Sorry about that. Sheriff Carter didn't mention anything either."

"But Beverly Barlowe's stuff?" Vi asked.

"Will be brought to you as soon as we can get it out of secure storage – minus the confidential things, of course. But when she took off she left a lot behind."

They were almost through; Willow could see a large patch of daylight not that far ahead. Nearby, a Steller's Jay watched them, just in case they put anything edible down for even a split second; they were lively, intelligent birds, but stole anything and everything they could get their beaks or claws on.

It must have been the faint but still present smell of garlicky root beer that was attracting the bird. It followed them to the edge of the road, where it perched on a conifer and squawked at them, like they had owed it food.

If she'd had anything, she would have thrown it to the ground, but she didn't. Instead, she said in jay (she had a permanent spell that allowed her to speak to passerines; it would have been useless with the dodo) that the next time it saw her, to tell her that she owed it some food. The startled jay made her promise, then flew off.

"You speak bird?" Jo asked as they walked down the road towards her car.

"Only some species," Willow said. "Jays happen to be one of them. Most birds aren't very good conversationalists." Jays were actually an exception; they were related to crows, and crows were pretty smart.

And then they were at the car. Before they could get in, a pickup truck came roaring up. Taggart was driving; Zane was in the passenger seat.

"You okay?" Zane said as he scrambled out.

"Yeah. Think so. Going back to GD to get checked out. Where the hell were you?"

"Hiding out going over something related to one of Parrish's weapon projects. Then Taggart found me and told me what was going on. Fargo told us you were heading back to your car, and boom." They were standing pretty close together by now, so Willow grabbed Vi's arm and they walked over to Taggart.

"Where was he?" Willow said quietly.

"Where do you think? Bathroom." Willow and Vi chuckled. Taggart then asked, "So, you tracked her down without going through the woods, eh?"

"Yup. Sorry to ruin all your work."

Taggart grinned. "No worries. It was fun. But," growing serious, "Look. I'd like to go with you when you go after Beverly and Senator Wen. I didn't know your aunt very long, but she was a good person."

Vi said, "I would be honored, Mr. Taggart."

Looking over at Jo, who was in the middle of an – um – intense discussion with Zane, Willow said, "And could we impose on you for a ride back to GD? Jo said she'd do it, but she's, well -"

"Say no more. Hop in, ladies."


	20. Better Overkill than Underkill

What started out as an unusual day even for Eureka turned into a (sadly) typical day for Eureka, although this one at least had been cleaned up quicker than most. Douglas Fargo waited to make sure that things weren't about to suddenly go to hell – you never really did know, in Eureka – but after hearing from both Henry and a couple of GD geological specialists that the effects were confined to an approximate cylinder roughly twenty-five feet across and at least three hundred feet down, he was satisfied that the day was going to end with Eureka plunging downwards as though being preyed upon by a giant ant lion. They were fortunate that Jared had designed the area of effect controls with such precision.

So, he asked Henry to bring the designs into GD so they could fine tune it – with Jared's help, of course, and with him receiving full credit for the invention. The boys were both in trouble, but Fargo was sure he could persuade the Sheriff to at least give them time off to help the GD engineers develop it into its final form.

He called the man just to be on the safe side. _Sotto voce_ – the boys must have been locked in a cell – he said, "Of course. Causing a disaster's practically a rite of passage in Eureka. My job now is to make damn sure they don't do that kind of thing again."

"You could assign them community service at GD," Fargo suggested.

He was sure he could hear the grin at the other end of the line. "Just what I was thinking. Just make sure some of what they do is emptying trash and cleaning up spills, okay?"

Willow and Vi beat him back to GD, of course; they left word with Larry that they were headed to their jobs but were ready to "hash out the special project" at his convenience.

Taggart, in the meantime was waiting in Fargo's office.

"So," he said with a coprophagic grin. "I hear you have a dodo."

XxXxX

Vi Fisher got to work on her giant hogweed problem for a couple of hours before she and Willow got called back up to Fargo's office. She'd spent most of the day collecting samples and determining what kind of chemical or bioagent might be plausible to force them to enter pseudo-maturity faster. Basically, she was going to try to fool the plant into producing flowers before it had the resources to produce seeds. There were similar things at Global and elsewhere in town, but they were mostly used to restrict the size of a genuinely mature plant – not exactly what she needed.

By then, it was time for a strategy session. Everyone in Eureka who knew about magic and/or Slayers was there – everyone they knew knew, anyway, including Taggart. Martina was there as well.

"Although," Fargo said. "Let me make one thing crystal clear. The dodo will not be going along on this mission." Martina looked up at him and gave a querulous squawk. "Yes, you," he said, and began to skritch her head as they got down to business. "First things first: Anyone locate anything Senator Wen left behind?"

Jack said, "No, and Andy and I've spent the last couple of hours doing just that. We checked everywhere she went – we even checked Cafe Diem in case Vince had something in the lost and found. No luck."

Without being prompted, Jo said, "Me neither."

Well, crap. As far as vengeance went, that sucked. She might be able to slap Beverly Barlowe around a bit, but Senator Wen was the real target, and they need Barlowe alive and reasonably undamaged. Not that she would kill Wen either – Slayers didn't do that to humans who weren't actively trying to kill them. But she'd've been able to do a lot more than slap her around.

"Then I say we go after Beverly now and worry about Senator Wen later," Fargo said. "Jo, I assume you can have a security force ready by tomorrow?"

"Don't insult me. I can have a security force ready in twenty minutes."

Vi looked over at Willow, who looked vaguely panicked for a second. Of course she could handle another tracking spell, but they needed time to plan out how they would separate Beverly Barlowe from the group; if they were headed out of here in twenty minutes they'd have to go on the fly. Making things up as they went along was part and parcel of being a Slayer or a member of the Slayers' Auxiliary, along with understanding that plans tended to go kablooey more often than not, but that didn't mean you didn't want to have some plan if you had the chance.

Since they'd changed their plan on the fly to let them publicly be able to track down Beverly Barlowe without fully breaking cover, Vi was hoping they'd be able to keep that up. Teleporting away was the backup plan, but the people of Eureka knew who and what they were at this point; they were probably way better off not pissing them off. It might even have been better if they'd just asked for an appointment, gotten it, and explained what they wanted, rather than played things sneaky. But that opportunity was pretty much lost forever, and wishing things could have been otherwise was both unproductive and dangerous, if a vengeance demon happened to be hanging out nearby.

Willow said, "Okay, but I can't have another tracking spell ready till tomorrow. And no offense, Mr. Taggart –"

"Just Taggart's fine," he said amiably.

Willow nodded. "Okay. But if you could do it by yourself, I think you would have."

"Right. I'm a wilderness specialist and she's been gone too long. Way things are now, you need a PI or a witch. And I'm neither. But if she skedaddles into the woods, I'm your man. Jo? Would you mind if I armed myself? I've got a tranq gun that can bring down anything from a housefly to a blue whale."

"Go for it – though Carter, you and I'll be the only ones armed with lethal weapons."

"Why does anyone need to be armed with lethal weapons?" Willow asked.

"Because while Beverly seems to have a thing against killing, obviously some of her associates don't," Jack said.  
"Okay," Willow said kind of dubiously.

"Don't you kill vampires and demons all the time?" Fargo asked.

"Vampires. Demons. Not people," Vi said. Martina squawked. "No, not dodos," Vi added, and the tension in the room lightened a bit.

It wasn't the tension of hostility, but the tension of the importance of what they were doing. Only Martina seemed oblivious as she walked over and let Vi skritch her instead. This seemed to make her content.

If only their problems could be solved as easily.

XxXxX

Willow broke the silence by asking, "Sheriff? When we do this, can Vi and I ride with you?"

"I was hoping not to have be the guy in front drawing all of the heat, for once," the sheriff grumbled, half-seriously.

"It would simplify things, actually," Fargo said.

"How?" the sheriff asked.

Fargo said, "Because that way we won't need to come up with an explanation as to what exactly, Willow is doing. We've simply installed a prototype tracking system in your vehicle, and Ms. Rosenberg is there to make sure it works properly."

"Oh!" Vi said. "And I'm there because Jo deputized me for the mission after I kicked her ass."

Giving Vi a sour look, Jo said, "Barely beat me in combat."

Grinning for a second, Vi repeated loudly, "Kicked. Your. Ass." This startled Martina, who retreated to the corner of the room, where Fargo had a kind of bed set up. The dodo went over, sat down, and in a surprisingly short period of time was fast asleep.

"Sorry. I didn't mean beat me. I meant, _bite me_." It wasn't said particularly maliciously.

"You have me and what I kill mixed up," Vi said.

"Whatever," Jo mock-grumbled. "Still, there's an even easier explanation. You're there because you want to kick the ass of the person who killed your aunt."

Vi's momentary good mood, noticeable mostly for its absence ever since she found out that not only was her aunt Holly dead but that her family hadn't bothered telling her about it, vanished. "Yeah," she said somberly. "Good point. And you let me come because of my obvious fighting skills."

"Good," Fargo said. "And in case you're wondering, I'm not going. Sheriff Carter, I'd like Andy to stay behind also – in case something goes wrong here, we don't want to leave the place defenseless. Jo, how many people will you need?"

Jo shrugged. "How would I know? I don't know if she's holing up in a cabin in the woods lighting the place with fireflies, or if she's safe in some life-sized dollhouse with two hundred avengers ready to kill anyone who comes near her. I think we're better off taking as many as we can spare. Better overkill than underkill."

After another minute to see whether anyone had anything to say about that, Fargo said, "Okay. When should we do this?"

Jo said, "I told you already. Twenty minutes." Before Willow could object – because, you know, she could track, but right now, not so good for either timing or her energy level – "But tomorrow morning seems like it'd be best for everyone else. So, anyone have a problem with being here by 7?"

"I do have to do the spell, which, by the way," Willow said, "Will smell even more of garlic root beer than today's did because, more powerful equals more odor. Also, it's more complex and it'll take longer if, you know, you want me to be able to do more than be able to say "that-a-way" and point in Beverly Barlowe's general direction. So here by 7 probably means leaving by around 7:30 at the earliest, and you might want to either have an explanation for the smell or figure out how to get rid of it."

"I can handle that," Taggart said. "I've got a special chemical compound that hides my scent. Very useful when I'm tracking an animal and makes it harder for the predators to catch me." After a second, he added, "It's also completely environment-friendly."

Fargo stood up and said, "Okay then. 7 tomorrow morning it is."

They all left, and, it being a bit past lunchtime, Jo and Vi went to go run on the virtual treadmills ("we'll try to avoid any jaguars this time," Jo said), Willow headed back down to the computer lab (the other computer people had gone back over their security with a fine-tooth comb and closed not only the loophole Willow had found yesterday but two others, besides, and then practically double-dog-dared her to break in now.

Without magic, she was reasonably sure she couldn't. These people were good; best of the best, with half of them being recruited from the ranks of former hackers themselves. Zane, while he'd closed the exploit she'd used to break in in the first place, was way above their level. Calling him a hacker would have been like calling Leonardo da Vinci a sculptor: technically accurate, but ridiculously incomplete. Willow may have been neck and neck with him in computer skills, but on the rest he blew her away.

Anyway, at the end of the day Willow and Vi went straight home and, after calling Maryland to see if there was any change (there wasn't, though Buffy and Dawn were getting more and more frustrated), had a light dinner and then began planning their own strategy.

Willow was going to have to use a lot of energy to do this, so not only did the plan have to account for finding Beverly Barlowe, catching her, and somehow transporting her to Maryland into a pre-arranged cell, preferably without the denizens of Eureka figuring out what was going on, the magic involved had to make the driven snow look dingy and dusty. Power didn't corrupt, but what you were drawing the power for did. The tracking spell was no problem; it was true neutral and, sacrificially, didn't involve much more than a couple of garlic bulbs.

Teleportation wasn't an issue, either, although she was going to have to transport Beverly Barlowe into an open room and let the people at the other end capture her; something they were just aching to do, by the way. Simply teleporting her into a cell, if she wasn't actively attacking, was neutral shading towards not nice. Shifting her to a room where she was going to be captured in a matter of seconds may have been the thinnest of technicalities, but along such technicalities lay the boundaries between good and evil.

That left the hard part. Plus, you know, Willow didn't just want to send the woman to Maryland, let her help fix the problem with Buffy and Dawn, and send her on her merry way; she wanted her punished, both for what she'd done to Eureka in the past, and her role in Holly Marten's death, even if she displayed some remorse about it. But there wasn't time to do all that –

Huh. Okay, maybe there was.


	21. Eureka?

Jack Carter let the two boys go when their parents came to pick them up; as he'd expected, they were equal parts proud and horrified. He informally arranged "community service" doing gruntwork at GD – technically, not the sheriff's job, but Henry was the court system in Eureka for most of the small things. On the rare occasions someone from outside Eureka broke the law to any extent greater than a traffic citation, Jack simply handed them over to the county or state police and let them take care of it.

He gave Andy an edited version of the scheduled events of the next day – leaving out any reference to magic, of course, not wanting to have his deputy call in Dr. Hughes to cure his boss' delusions. He was disappointed at not being able to go, but he completely understood and promised not to let Eureka be taken over by weaponized hornets while everyone was gone.

"That . . . hadn't actually concerned me till now," Jack said.

"Well, then, don't let it keep you up nights, Boss," Andy said. "The odds are almost infinitesimally low. The chances that Eureka'll be destroyed by explosion are thousands of times greater."

"Thanks again," Jack said sourly. "At least I'll know who to blame."

Jo spent the night with Zane and Andy and SARAH were having a minor tiff. Nothing serious, not even serious enough to make her grumpy towards him, but enough to keep Andy away for the night.

So, with Allison at that medical conference (she was getting back Sunday) and Kevin and Jenna with their grandmother – Jack loved the kids and Allison knew he had no trouble taking care of them, so it hadn't been that, they'd apparently just been overdue for some time with grandma – Jack, for the first time in approximately forever, had the house completely to himself.

He ate pizza, watched the Mariners lose to the Orioles, and got, if not a good night's sleep, at least a decent one before SARAH woke up him up. A shower, a Vinspresso, and a bacon-and-egg sandwich later, and he was at GD ready to get tracking.

XxXxX

Willow explained how they were going to get Beverly Barlowe to Maryland. It seemed simple enough, but Vi had the feeling Willow was holding something back. "Is it going to drain you too much?"

"That's not it. I'll be down, but not out. No, it's that it's going to take pretty accurate timing to get it to do exactly what we want it to do. I don't have no leeway, but I don't have a whole lot, and being even the slightest bit outside that range will make it screw up somehow."

This was more than a bit worrying. "Isn't there anything else you can use?"

"Not under these circumstances, no," Willow said. "If we'd gone by ourselves, we could have just knocked her out, you know, at our leisure, but this is the trade-off for the possibility of not cutting all ties with Eureka."

"We did kind of have no choice," Vi pointed out.

"No, we had choices, but this was as good a one as any, and I hadn't come up with anything by the time we needed to, so really, no problem. I'm just making sure you know so if the timing isn't quite perfect, you're ready to do whatever you need to do to get clear, and maybe get me clear. Okay?"

"Okay."

Then they spent a couple of hours going over possible scenarios over and over, all the while knowing that they couldn't possibly prepare for everything, and then they went to bed.

The next morning Willow spent an hour or so building up a store of power – she couldn't keep it forever, but she could hold it in for what they needed today. Then they headed over to Global Dynamics to finally track down Beverly Barlowe once and for all.

XxXxX

7? Ha! Jo Lupo was at GD by 6, ready to go. The security team that was going with them on the mission was there by 6:30; they weren't fools, either. Most of them were former military, so they knew when the orders were serious, and this one was serious as a heart attack (serious, even in Eureka). Besides, like pretty much everyone in town, they also had a beef with Beverly Barlowe and Senator Wen. The general public might not know about the senator's crimes, but they were hardly a secret around town, and everyone from her most trigger-happy guard to Vince was ready to do her serious damage.

That was actually what she stressed most in her orders about Beverly Barlowe: Bringing her back alive was crucial. Her bullet-riddled body, while it would be emotionally satisfying, wasn't what they were after; her most trigger-happy guards were staying behind for this one. (Everyone going was fully qualified to shoot the wings off a gnat from a quarter mile away, but none of them were the shoot first and ask questions later type.)

Willow, Vi and Jo showed up at about the same time, a few minutes before 7 o'clock, and Fargo showed up at 7 on the dot. When everyone was wondering where Taggart was, he came out of the elevator and said, "Hello there. Got the stuff and I'm ready whenever you are."

Some members of the security team looked puzzled, but they were too disciplined to ask any questions; anyone who didn't quickly grasp the concept of need-to-know when it came to high-level GD operations quickly found themselves looking for a job somewhere else.

After they had a quick meeting, they all headed outside. Most of the security was told to go their vans and wait; a few were deployed at the outer edge of where Willow was going to cast her tracking spell and told no not only to stop anyone from trying to take a peek but to not do any peeking themselves unless they heard someone yell for help.

She walked the perimeter, keeping an eye both on her security guard and what was happening inside. She didn't understand any of it, but the same could be said for most of the science that went on around here, and it worked too.

She was finally letting herself be optimistic: This time, they might be able to pull it off.

XxXxX

Douglas Fargo slept like a log for the first time since Holly's death. No, they wouldn't be getting the person directly responsible, but they would be getting the person indirectly responsible, and that was a good start. Beverly Barlowe had made a career out of being able to talk herself into and out of anything; of being the lesser of two evils, a lot of the time.

She was still the lesser of the two evils, compared to Senator Wen. But the lesser of two evils was still, well, evil.

When Fargo got to work, everyone else, except for Taggart, was already in the lobby. He got everyone in the know together for a quick conference just in case there were any last minute developments or problems. Fortunately, there wasn't. He handed Willow two books owned by and a pantsuit worn by Beverly Barlowe and she nodded and she said, "Yeah, this'll do."

After they were done, they headed outside. Fargo was going to simply go to his office, but he wanted to see Willow cast the spell.

After a half hour had passed, Fargo was beginning to understand why spellcasting wasn't a spectator sport. He and Jo had been walking around the perimeter and Jo was getting more and more impatient. Once, about twenty minutes in, she took a few steps inside, headed towards Willow to see what was taking so long – Jo had a lot going for her, but patience wasn't one of her strengths – and Vi intercepted her before she finished her third step.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To find out what's taking so long."

"Did you hear Willow yesterday? She said she didn't know how long this would take. This is bigger than any tracking spell she's ever done before. I think she's getting close to being done – but I'm an expert at magic only compared to you guys."

"And what if it takes another hour?" Jo asked. "Hey! Eyes out!" One of the guards had half- turned when he heard Vi say "tracking spell," but spun back around so quickly it was like he was attached to a motorized clamp.

Vi said, "Willow would have said she couldn't handle it, if this was going to take her too long, she'd have said something. She hasn't. So calm down. Please."

"I'm calm," Jo said in a tone that said she was anything but. "I just want to get going, already."

"The woman we're trying to find is indirectly responsible for my aunt's death. You think you're anxious?"

Jo nodded. "Good point," she said, and moved back to the perimeter.

That was one of the reasons he wasn't going, in fact; his personal stake in this. He didn't trust himself not to do something stupid, under these circumstances. (The possibility of getting shot at wasn't one of the others; he'd brave worse to catch the people who killed Holly. But, while training for the Astraeus mission had given him a reasonable degree of physical fitness, he'd still be a liability when it came to a military-style assault.)

For maybe another ten-twelve minutes Willow remained kneeling, only her measured deep breathing signifying that she wasn't actually asleep.

Then she opened her eyes.

XxXxX

Willow had spent most of her waking time that morning continuing to draw in and store what power she could. It wasn't like it had been with the books after Tara'd been killed; those were quick hits of massive power, shocks to her system, and it had put her more on tilt than she already was at the time. This was taking what the earth would allow her to take, nothing more. And as the manner taken was at the leisure of the Earth, so could the manner of release be at her leisure. (Well, she couldn't keep it forever. But long enough for the day.

Vi handled any questions for either of them - Willow spoke only when Fargo handed her clothing and books belonging to Beverly Barlowe - and made abundantly clear to everyone not to interrupt her while she was casting the spell unless a literal disaster was about to happen. It wasn't exactly more complicated than the one she'd done yesterday morning, but it was more massive; she couldn't get the spell to encompass the entire planet unless she wanted to spend the next week preparing, but a radius of a couple hundred miles was doable. (The casting time expanded faster than the radius did.)

And so, she knelt on the earth, thanked the gods and goddesses for their help past and future, mixed the powder, watched as Taggart sprayed his scent nullifier into the air and then gave a thumbs-up sign, closed her eyes, and concentrated. The smell of garlic root beer faded.

_Let me find the path. Show me the way to the woman to whom these items belong._Distantly, she heard a conflict, but didn't allow it to disturb her focus. Vi knew how to bring her out if it was necessary.

Okay. She was beginning to see a path. It led somewhere off to the southwest – and there wasn't a whole lot of west to go, here in Oregon. She couldn't tell distance, other than "more than 100 feet," and, that close, Willow was fairly sure they would have caught that.

There. An approximate distance – around 150 miles. Of course, that was on a straight shot, or technically, an arc of the curvature of the Earth shot – she didn't know driving time, of course, but this was going to be an all-day affair.

Okay. 144 miles. Now she could give them a limited area to search in.

Just a little more and –

_Got you_.

She opened her eyes.

"I have found her," she said. "Can I see a map?"

Fargo, with Jo, came forward and handed her his cell phone. "Bigger," she said. "Oh! And a ruler, too."

At Jo's nod, one of the security force ran into the building, coming back five minutes later with a paper map of the northwest, and a ruler. She laid the map down, asking Vi and Taggart to hold the edges, and, using the scale on the map, measured out 144 miles –

Then began laughing.

"What's so funny?" Jo asked.

"Beverly Barlowe has a sense of irony," Willow said. "She's hiding out in Eureka -"

"Here in town?" the sheriff said. "Then why'd you need the ruler?"

"You didn't let me finish, Sheriff," Willow said. "She's hiding out in Eureka, _California_."


	22. Cop Land

Apologies to the real Eureka, CA police chief.

XxXxX

As soon as Willow said the word "California," Fargo was typing on his cell with the speed of a cheetah – if cheetahs could type. As Willow cleaned up, he said, "That's about a three and a half hour drive – depends on where exactly she is." He looked at Willow hopefully.

But she said, "Can't tell you the exact address. Sorry."

It was worth a shot. "Jo?"

"On it." She rounded up the security guards and said, "Come on, people! We're going to be on the road for a while. Move it, move it, move it!"

Sheriff Carter, meanwhile, came up to him and said, "Okay, Fargo. We'll keep you updated. You ladies ready?"

Vi said, "Hell, yes." Willow simply nodded. "Okay then. Let's get going."

Fargo got out of the way as everyone scrambled to their vehicles, simply saying "good luck" to the sheriff as he ran off. Then he called in the grounds crew, told them to clean up the remnants of Willow's spell, and headed back inside.

More than a dozen people asked him what was going on; he fended them off by saying it was security business, not theirs, and told Larry as he went into his office that he should answer any questions about the doings of this morning by saying, "I don't know, he never tells me anything."

There was a meeting with a couple of people from the Department of Defense later that he needed to get ready for. Business, even under these circumstances, went on.

XxXxX

They made good time to the other Eureka; his navigation system had it taking around three and a half hours and they were approaching the outskirts in a bit under four. There had only been one stop, a combined food and bathroom break; now they'd just passed through a small town called Arcata, with Eureka itself a couple of miles away.

Jo had called ahead and suggested they stop again, just to make sure they were all on the same page. Normally, they'd have called ahead to clear the way with local law enforcement – security at GD had some kind of arcane federal classification that let them cross state lines when they had to. Usually they used it to track down and recover an experiment gone wrong, occasionally a scientist gone AWOL; the assaults they'd done on Senator Wen's two bases a few weeks back had been the exception, rather than the rule, but they were legally allowed to do what they were doing.

Anyway, the reason they hadn't let the Eureka, California police force in on their actions until now – a decision he'd disagreed with, having seen in his career as a US marshal how thrilled local cops were to have someone else horning in on their territory – was that they didn't want them to call the DoD when there was still time for General Mansfield or someone else to override the mission. Mansfield wasn't corrupt, but the guy was still a jerk.

Willow and Vi stayed in the vehicle; Willow'd been concentrating for four hours straight and the strain was definitely showing, while Vi was making sure she was okay.

Jo, to Jack's not particularly great surprise, was all for just roaring up to Beverly's location, taking her into custody, and letting the details sort themselves out later.

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission?" Jack said. Jo nodded. "But we're not asking permission. We're telling them what we're going to do. We're letting them know because we don't want a local panicking and calling the cops, and instead of being able to explain what's going on calmly and rationally we have to do it while everyone's pointing guns at each other and screaming. That's the kind of thing I usually like to avoid."

"Okay. But you realize a parade through town is going to get people talking, too," Jo said.

"Yeah. You're right. Here's what we'll do. I'll see if Willow can hold the spell for an hour or so, you and me'll go to the nearest station and explain ourselves, and then we'll come back here and get it done. Okay?"

Jo said, "Okay. We'll play it that way." She walked back to her vehicle, got on her radio, and said, "Okay, people. Take it easy for the moment but be ready." She came back and said, "Let's go."

When he got into the car, Jo getting into the back next to Vi, Willow said she could handle the tracking spell for a while longer yet. "It's mentally draining, but I'm good for right now."

"Okay. Hey – how precise is it? Can you tell if she's moving, for instance?" Beverly wasn't necessarily holing up in a dark room, after all.

"Well, not exactly, but close enough. I can get within thirty feet or so."

"Sounds good," Jo said.

"One second. So if we happen to pass right by her?" Jack asked.

"I'll be able to tell you," she said.

"Good. Just thinking that if we happen to pass her while she's doing her grocery shopping or something, we can leap out and grab her."

"Wait a minute," Jo said. "I thought you wanted to tell the local LEO's what was going on."

"I do, but I'm not an idiot. Not stepping on their toes is definitely less important than grabbing her if we can."

"Agreed."

"Willow?" Vi asked. "Where is she now?"

"A few miles in that direction." She pointed somewhere southwest, but more south than west.

Jack checked the navigation system for where the police station was, and it was definitely more west than south. And closer than a couple of miles. "Ah well," he said. "I knew it couldn't be that easy."

It almost never was.

XxXxX

It took them less than ten minutes to find the police station. Willow and Vi stayed in the car while Jo and Carter went inside. They were quickly shown to Chief Finley's office. He was balding, mid-40s, and fit; he got up and shook their hands, laughed at the fact that Carter was the sheriff of another Eureka, and said, "So what can I do for the two of you today?"

Carter took the lead. "We have reason to believe that there's a wanted fugitive hiding out in town."

"Really?" he said. "And it's got a small-town sheriff working with a federal agent?"

"She's extremely dangerous," Jo said, not lying in the slightest. "And she committed her crimes in Eureka – his Eureka. He wanted to be there when we brought her in."

"Okay," Chief Finley said. "Who is this fugitive?"

"Her name's Beverly Barlowe," Carter said. "She's wanted for everything from robbery to manslaughter to treason against the – whoa!"

Jo had stronger words in mind, but wasn't about to banter with a revolver pointed at her. "Just stay right there," Chief Finley said, picking up his phone. "Helen? Get Orbach and Martin in here, and then call Dr. Barlowe. They've found her."

As he hung up, he was distracted for a split second. Jo had no idea what was going on here, other than that somehow Beverly Barlowe had managed to subvert the Eureka police, but she knew they couldn't go wherever Orbach and Martin were going to take them. She dove to the side, and like she'd hoped, when the chief's pistol followed her Carter knocked it out of his hand and quickly pulled his own weapon.

Just in time, because a man and a woman opened Finley's door right then. "Get them!" he yelled.

Carter shot the chief – taser effect only. He'd figured out what she had, that they didn't know whether these were Beverly's pawns or her willing accomplices and they couldn't just kill them unless they had no choice.

The chief went down; at the same time, Jo drew her weapon and fired it at Orbach and Martin, who, not anticipating this kind of trouble, didn't have their service weapons drawn and went down quickly. Carter went over to lock the door while Jo flipped her cell and called first her second-in-command, then Vi, and told them what was going on.

By now, some of the people outside were banging on the door trying to get in. She and Carter moved the desk against it and then hit the floor.

There was more pounding, but no bullets came through the glass. Jo didn't care why they weren't shooting, but she was glad.

That didn't prevent them from tossing in a tear gas canister a couple of minutes later, though. Jo slipped the GD filters into her nose, told Carter to close his eyes and hold his breath, and reached for the canister.

XxXxX

After Jack and Jo had been in the station for about five minutes, Vi got a hurried call: "The locals are in on it. Help."

"You go," Willow said. "The car's locked. I'm good for now."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." And they could have probably found Beverly Barlowe on their own at this point, but that would involve screwing over Jack and Jo, so the only thing holding Vi back was making sure Willow would be okay. Before he witch finished speaking, Vi was out the door and headed for the station.

She walked in calmly and talked to the officer at the front desk. "Hi. I need to report a robbery," she said.

"Up the stairs," the man said. "First door on your right."

"Thank you." Vi wasn't sure why the building wasn't on lockdown, but she wasn't about to question any good luck. She jogged up the stairs, stopped at the top, and listened. There were sounds of fighting from off to the left; the hallway was deserted.

When she got closer, she could see why. Everyone on the floor – at least forty people, everyone from cops to the clerical staff and even the janitor – was trying to shove their way into an office. No one was firing into it, but just as she stepped into the room three police broke open a window and threw something inside.

Probably tear gas. Okay. Time to work. These were people, not demons, not vampires, and based on the way they were acting, probably under some kind of mental control, whether spell or science wasn't particularly important at the moment. She took the janitor's cart – abandoned in the heat of the moment – and plowed into some of the people standing towards the back. Then she swiped a mop, broke the handle off of the mop head, and began swinging it, aiming to either knock people down, or knock them out.

It had only been a few seconds when the office door opened and gas started seeping out. Vi'd managed to get some of the attackers down – and it was a lot easier because the only ones who were coming at her were the ones she'd hit, with everyone else still trying to force their way into the office. If she needed any more proof that the police weren't in their right minds, this was it. They weren't acting like mindless zombies; some of them even turned and looked at her. But they weren't attacking her.

The clouds of tear gas were starting to pour towards her and the crowd starting coughing and wheezing, but they still pressed towards the office. Vi hung back towards the edge and swiped at the legs of the attackers until two people came out of the cloud towards her.

Jack and Jo. Jack had his eyes closed and was gasping for air; Vi took him by the hand, said, "It's me!" and hurried him into the hall.

Jo, meanwhile, wasn't nearly as affected for some reason, and while Jack recovered started shooting everyone in sight with some kind of long-distance taser. Vi kept one eye on Jack and kept pounding on legs and heads with the mop handle until the three of them were the only ones left standing

"What happened?" she asked.

"They attacked as soon as we mentioned Beverly Barlowe's name," Jack choked out.

"Looked like some kind of mind control to me," Vi said. "They barely noticed I was even in the room."

"Whatever it was, we have to assume the entire town'll be after us," Jo said.

"They will be," a voice said from down the hallway. It was the desk sergeant. "I would be too, if you'd mentioned who you were lookin' for."

"So how do you know?" Jo asked.

"Because they wouldn't have acted like that for any other reason. You two coulda been Bonnie and Clyde shootin' up the place and they wouldn't have asked Johnny -" he pointed to the prone figure of the janitor – "or the secretaries after you. I ain't after you because she told us to keep an ear out for people saying her name."

"Just to be clear," Jack said, still coughing a little, "You mean a red-haired psychiatrist?"

"Yup," the sergeant said. "She told us to restrain anyone askin' about her and give her a call so she could get out of town. She didn't tell us not to tell you what she'd done." He peered inside. "Dunno if anyone in there's had the time to make a call, but you might wanna get goin' before one of 'em thinks to tell me to help take you down. I won't like havin' to do it, but I'll do it."

"Did she tell you to do anything else?" Jack asked.

"Just to live our lives normally. She's got some off-duty cops guardin' her, but she pays 'em."

"Why are you doing what she says?" Vi asked. "You know she's wanted for treason, right?"

"Yup," he said. "Couldn't tell you why. Got called to a meeting at the airport a couple weeks back and since then we've been followin' her orders." So, she'd been right. Mind control of some sort.

"Thanks, Sergeant –" Jo began.

"Prell."

"Sergeant Prell," she finished. "We're going to have to knock you out now."

"No hard feelings," Sgt. Prell said, and Jo tasered him.

"That should give us half an hour," she said. "Let's go."

GD security troops were pouring from their vehicles when they got outside, but Jo stopped them with one hand. "Don't bother. They're not our problem. Right now, we have to find Be – our target. She may already be on the move; she'll have some off-duty police officers as guards. Do not, I repeat, do not injure the guards. Let's go."

The troops scrambled back inside within seconds. As Jack, Jo and Vi followed them, Jo gave Jack a smug grin and said, "Told you so."

"Oh, shut up," was the sheriff's reply.


	23. There and Back Again

Jack and Vi got into his SUV. While Jo told him so, this really wasn't something they could have prepared for. Yeah, Beverly was always a handful, but they hadn't planned on her mind-controlling an entire town, especially a not-so-small one like this Eureka.

"We need to find her fast," he said to Willow as he screeched out of his parking spot. "Long story short, she's got everyone in the city wired to either protect her or warn her and someone might have gotten the word out so we need to get there fast."

"Okay," Willow said. "She's not moving yet."

"Good. Maybe for once we've caught a break." He sped up.

"Sheriff -"

"What?"

"We needed to turn back there."

"Of course we did." He hung a U, grateful for the lack of oncoming traffic, and headed off down the road.

Several turns later and they were on Montgomery Street. "Okay," Willow said. "Straight ahead as far as you can go and off to the left. Wait – now she's moving!"

"Which direction?"

"Towards us! Maybe a quarter mile away!"

"What the hell?" Jack and Vi said simultaneously.

There was a vehicle coming at them; when the driver saw Jack's police vehicle and the line of cars and SUVs following, they slammed on the brakes, and then got out of the car.

And damned if it wasn't Beverly Barlowe, large as life.

She lifted a bullhorn to her mouth as the three of them got out. "People! This is Beverly Barlowe. Phone tree and help me!"

Within thirty seconds people began streaming out of the nearby houses. In the meantime, Jo and the few dozen GD troops had also gotten out and were getting ready for action.

"Fire," Jo said without a second's in unison, the massed troops fired, stunning everyone who was leaving their houses. A couple fired at Beverly, but she'd had the presence of mind to dive behind her car, and they missed her. "We can keep this up as long as you can," Jack yelled out to her.

"Can you?" and for a horrifying second Jack wondered whether whatever was letting her mind-control the local population was airborne. But no; if that was the case Beverly wouldn't have bothered screeching to a halt; she would have stopped her car calmly and ordered them to surrender, and they would have. Be nice if they'd have thought of this before they came roaring down here, but the only other choice would have been backing off and letting her get away again.

"Dr. Marten?" Beverly said, shocked. First time she'd gotten a good look at Vi, apparently. "How -?"

"Look closer," Vi snapped.

"In fact," Jack added, "Why don't you just walk over here and get a really good look?"  
"Thanks, but I can see from here," she said. "You're not Holly Marten. The resemblance is uncanny , but you're about ten years younger. Who are you?"

"Violet Fisher. Holly Marten's niece."

And Beverly said, "Whether you believe me or not, I'm sorry about your aunt."

Jack actually believed her, but of course this was all definitely beside the point. Before Vi could answer, he said, "Not really important right now. We've caught you, Beverly. Make it easy on all of us, would you?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, Jack. Since when has anything – would you stop that, Jo?-" Jo had the troops facing out, but occasionally shooting in Beverly's direction, but the car was blocking too many of her shots, and there were too many people coming to simply rush the woman.

And now here came four people, three men, one woman, with service revolvers drawn. Terrific. As they raised their weapons, Jack said, "Hit the deck!" The gunshots went over their heads.

Beverly, meanwhile, wasn't happy. "No killing!" she said to what had to be her off-duty police guard squadron.

With a look of relief on their faces, they holstered their weapons. Then they pulled out their riot batons. Terrific. Hand-to-hand combat. He loved hand-to-hand combat almost as much as he did GD's fitness tests.

Vi said to Willow, "Ready?" Ready for what? She'd done her part.

Willow's response was, "Just about," which surprised Jack. Maybe she was coming up with another spell.

"Okay. I'll be back in a minute." Then, to Jack, he said, "Keep an eye on her."

"But –"

"I got it," Vi said calmly. "Trust me." Then, without waiting for Jack's answer, she ran at the four cops, wrestled the riot baton from the one in the lead, and began beating the crap out of them. They fought back, but it didn't seem like they were giving it their all.

At least, not until Beverly yelled, "Try harder!" All of a sudden they were moving like experienced, well-trained police.

Which made it a little harder for Vi, but not much. Still, they were enough to stop her from getting to Beverly, for the moment.

More and more of the town's population was coming , but were being dropped by Jo's troops. There had to be at least two hundred people down and three times that many coming – mostly from down Montgomery street, but a few were creeping out from behind houses. "How long can they hold out?" he asked Jo.

"With what we have? Another hour, easy. They're not being creative."

"Because Beverly didn't tell them to be," Jack said. "If Sergeant Prell was any indication most of these people don't like what's going on any more than we do."

Suddenly, Willow said, "Okay. Now I'm ready."

Letting Jo get back to the job of defending them from the hordes of Eureka, California, Jack went over by Willow and said, "Ready for what?" right at the same time she said, "Parare tempo!" and threw some powder to the ground.

Jack blinked at the puff of smoke, and then looked around.

Everything was frozen.

The townspeople; Vi and the four cops she was fighting; Jo's troops; Jo.

Check that. Not everything. He wasn't. Beverly wasn't. And Willow wasn't.

"You _stopped time_?" He practically yelled, surprising Willow, who jumped.

"Not perfectly."

Meanwhile, Beverly, who had to be as surprised as he was, recovered a split second sooner and sprinted off. Jack swore and started chasing her, but Willow said, "Don't bother."

A couple of seconds later, Beverly slammed into what looked like an invisible wall. "I suppose that's all the way around?" she asked when she picked herself up from the ground.

"That's a yup," Willow said. "Up, down, left, right. You're not getting out."

"Impressive piece of technology."

"And one you won't be stealing," Jack said. "Or any others. And I'm fairly sure we'll be adding slavery to the charges also."

"Sheriff -" Willow said. "I hate to do this, but I'm going to need to borrow her for a bit first."

"Borrow her?"

"Borrow me?" Beverly echoed.

"Yeah. She'll be returned. I promise. I don't like her any more than you do." Then, before anyone could respond, she walked up to Beverly, grabbed her wrist, and said as she touched her necklace, "Portarci a casa!"

"Hold it -" Jack said, stepping forward –

XxXxX

Jo hadn't needed more proof that the security at GD was top-notch, but she had it today. The troops were calmly firing at the oncoming locals, who were obligingly marching towards them in straight lines and not even attempting to dodge. So far, the only ones who'd gotten within fifty feet were the four off-duty cops,and Vi was handling them fairly easily.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jack, Willow and Beverly talk; then Willow shouted something and they disappeared for a split second and blinked back in in different positions.

What the hell?

XxXxX

The "just about" from Willow meant that she was less than thirty seconds away from casting her time stop spell. So she had to stop the four people with the riot clubs from disrupting things.

It was easier before Beverly Barlowe ordered the cops to try harder in their efforts to get her, but it wasn't absurdly hard afterwards. They were well-trained, but not even close to Jo's level, and while she was handicapped slightly because she didn't want to really hurt them, it still wasn't a fair fight.

So she saw Willow cast the time stop spell, and then Jack and Beverly Barlowe blinked out of existence, and then showed up again a few seconds later, having suddenly changed positions.

Crap. Willow and the psychiatrist were supposed to disappear. The sheriff and the psychiatrist weren't. Willow had said that the time stop spell needed precision and apparently she hadn't been quite precise enough.

Things were probably about to hit the fan. Vi set to disabling her opponents with a vengeance, and had them all down and unable to keep fighting in about fifteen seconds. She turned and took a step towards Willow –

XxXxX

Willow had enough energy to get this done. More than, in fact, with just enough left over for an emergency teleport for her and Vi. They wouldn't get back to Maryland, but they'd be far enough away that the Eurekans couldn't find them before they were able to get back to headquarters.

She hadn't counted on having to do in the middle of an honest-to-goddess full-scale battle, though. When she and Vi had gone over scenarios, they'd factored in having to do it in combat, but it was a smaller combat situation, not one where hundreds of people were coming at them, albeit that they were shuffling like zombies rather than charging and screaming like berserkers.

Still, she had to get it done. Waiting only gave things more of a chance to go wrong. While the combat went on, she muttered the words of the spell, finishing off with "Okay, now I'm ready" and then, a few seconds later "Parare tempo!" Then she threw down powder made from bristlecone pine, century plant root and the yolk of a hundred-year egg.

Unfortunately, right as she hurled the powder to the ground Sheriff Carter said, "Ready for what?" right next to her. A slight distraction, but enough that when the smoke cleared and the time field had been formed around them, the sheriff was inside, along with her and Beverly Barlowe.

Well, poop. This had been the key part of not letting the folks from Eureka – Eureka, Oregon - know that anything had happened, was to have all of them out of the field of unfrozen time. Now?

This was one of the contingencies they'd prepared for. What Willow had to do now was walk up to Beverly Barlowe, grab her, press and invoke her necklace, disappear, and apologize when they got back, right before shoving Beverly in their general direction, grabbing Vi and getting the hell out of there.

And this part of the plan worked – right up to the point that the sheriff said, "Hold on," and grabbed her arm –

And disappeared. Along with Beverly Barlowe.

Shit!

Just as Willow was set to begin a spell to figure out what had happened – no more than five subjective seconds later – they both blinked back into existence. Beverly was handcuffed to the sheriff. She looked somewhat disheveled but unhurt; the sheriff looked fine, if severely annoyed. He then held up a hand to Willow and said, "Hold on." Then he turned to Beverly and said, "Okay. And remember what happens if you do anything else."

Exasperated, the woman said, "I remember. Believe me, I remember."

"In a second," the sheriff said to Willow, "I'm going to ask you to drop this time freeze spell thingy. When I do, hand Beverly the bullhorn."

"And that would be why?" Willow asked.

She sighed. "Because I'm going to tell everyone to stand down and to ignore any orders I might give them in the future. Or I've been promised a fate worse than death by a few dozen people I'm sure are perfectly capable of carrying out their promises."

Made sense.

"And you, Scarlet Witch," and ignoring her gasp of astonishment, went on, "Are going to come with us and give us a complete explanation. I think we're entitled to that. Don't you?"

Willow had recovered enough to say, "Why?"

"Why? Because if you teleport out of here we will track you down and throw you in a hole so deep that the devil will be your upstairs neighbor." Then he smiled. "Or, to quote your friend Dawn – who's all better, by the way – "A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend."

XxXxX

We'll see Jack's POV next chapter.


	24. In Baltimore, Jack

Abruptly, Jack found himself in an indoor room, surrounded by about a dozen people, mostly heavily armed teenaged girls.

One, a brunette in leather pants, said, "Who the hell are y – he's got a gun!"

"What? I –"

Then something hit him on the back of the head, and then he didn't feel anything for a while.

XxXxX

When he woke up, he was lying down on a bed. He tried to get up, and found that he was handcuffed to the side rail. A young woman – one of the ones who'd been surrounding him earlier – was sitting on a box across the room, and watching him. She reminded him vaguely of Jo, for some reason. As soon as he opened his eyes, she yelled to someone he couldn't see, "Andrew!"

A short, nervous man appeared in the doorway. "Um, yes?"

"Get Giles. Tell him he's awake."

Andrew hurried off. The woman said, "So, how's your head?"

"Oh, fine," Jack said sarcastically. "Being knocked unconscious feels just like a Swedish massage."

"Yeah. That was me. You kind of surprised us when you popped in."

"I surprised you? Three seconds earlier I was standing on a street in California. Where the hell this is, I have no idea, but I'm fairly sure it's not a street in California."

"It's a room in Maryland. I'm not going to get more specific." By the way," she said in a casually menacing voice "If you're thinking of causing trouble -"

An English voice, male, came from the doorway. "Kennedy," he said, "What have I told you about threatening our guests?" Jack looked and aw a lean man in his mid-50s with glasses and a tweed jacket.

"Be clear," she said. "After all, as Dawn says, a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend."

"No; that's for threatening our enemies. Sheriff Carter is a guest. Please release him from his restraints."

"Okay, okay," she said, grumbling. Once she unlocked the cuffs, Carter swung out of bed and stood up. "But this isn't the way things were supposed to go."

"Your worry is understandable. But, I believe, unwarranted. Go inform the others that Sheriff Carter is awake."

"Okay." To Jack, she said, "Sorry about threatening you."

"Apology accepted." Kennedy nodded and left the room.

"Accept mine, too, for the inconvenience we have put you through. My name is Rupert Giles. I'm in charge here, for lack of anyone better to take the job." He extended his hand.

"Jack Carter. But you know that already," he said, shaking it. "In fact, you know a lot more about me than I know about you. So, Mr. Giles –"

"Just 'Giles' is fine."

"So, Giles," Jack said, "Exactly how much of what Willow and Vi told me is true? Is Vi even related to Holly Marten or was that just some inventive plastic surgery?"

"I assure you, Vi is indeed Ms. Marten's niece, and if she has had any plastic surgery, she has not chosen to disclose this fact to us. Had we known of the connection, we never would have subjected either the people of Eureka nor Vi herself to such pain. We would have found another way."

"Well, considering that I've been shanghaied across the country, your assurances aren't worth a whole lot at the moment. You let me out of the cuffs, so that buys you something."

"I understand completely," he said. "You asked how much of what Willow and Vi told you was true. What, exactly, did they tell you?"

Jack gave him a three-minute summary, interrupted only when Giles said, "She made a _dodo_?" in absolute astonishment.

"Yup. And I think you're going to need an army to get her away from Fargo."

"I wouldn't dream of trying. I wasn't aware Willow had the capacity to do such a thing."

Once he was finished, Giles said, "The only thing she concealed was our true reason for infiltrating Eureka."

"Which was?"

"Let me show you."

Jack shrugged. What was he going to do, say no? "One thing. Could I have my guns back? The one is fairly expensive and if I lose it it's going to be coming out of my salary for the next ten years." When Giles hesitated, Jack said, "So I'm going to be the only person in the building not carrying a weapon? That girl Kennedy had at least two knives and a stake on her, and you've got a stake strapped to your left ankle." At the other man's look of mild surprise, Jack pointed to his chest and said, "They didn't give me this because I look good in the uniform. Though I do."

"We're not fond of guns around here. Even unusual ones such as yours." His service revolver was standard, but the other one was a smaller version of the taser rifles that Jo's troops had been carrying.

Jack snorted. "I'm fairly sure everyone in the building, with the possible exception of Andrew, could take me in a fair fight – assuming most of those women were similar to Vi. With my weapon I might be able to stun one or two of you, if I got lucky, if I intended to fight my way out and run into the streets somewhere in Maryland – assuming we're not in some magic castle in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, that is. But I don't. Despite everything that's happened I don't think you're the bad guys." He didn't. He didn't fully trust them, because they hadn't trusted him or anyone in Eureka.

"Very well. Follow me." They walked through the halls of a fairly large building – it looked like a nursing home, honestly – and eventually came to a closed door. "One moment." He stood in front of the door and said, "Rupert Giles. Open."

"Identity as Rupert Giles confirmed. Enter." And the door swung open.

"There are doors like that in Eureka," Jack said. "Though they don't have Willow's voice. Magic, right?"

"Correct," he said, walking through the door.

"Um, can I come in or am I likely to be burned to a crisp if I try?" From looking inside, the room Giles had just gone into was some kind of weapons locker, though way more geared towards medieval weaponry than firearms. There were a handful of guns in there, but they were definitely outnumbered.

"No need; we have a separate area for visitors' weapons. We also had to confiscate one from Ms. Barlowe."

"Really? Can I see that, too?" Beverly didn't usually carry firearms of any sort. "If it 's high-tech I'm going to have to take it with me when I leave, anyway. You can leave it here, if you're worried."

Giles nodded and brought out something that looked like a mini tranquilizer gun. Jack looked at it; it appeared to be a new and improved version of one of the many weapons available to him as Sheriff. "Thank you," he said.

"Certainly." Giles put Beverly's weapon back and gave Jack both his guns. He holstered them.

Two minutes later they were standing in something that resembled nothing more the observation room for a police interrogation room. Inside, the leather-clad brunette and a man with an eyepatch sat on one side of a table, with Beverly sitting on the other side. "What kind of place is this?"

"Occasionally, when we are trying to stop an apocalypse, we need information, and often we need a method of questioning that falls between simply asking and beating it out of them – which we only use on truly evil non-humans, anyway. Ms. Barlowe falls into that category."

Okay . . . Jack wasn't sure how he felt about a private organization having an interrogation room – sentient beings had rights, moral if not legal. Still, he understood having to stop the end of the world; he'd helped stop it himself a few times.

" – not a technician," he suddenly heard Beverly's voice saying. Giles was stepping back from a switch on the wall. "So I don't know how you think I can help you."

"Maybe you ain't a mechanical whiz," the brunette said. "But you're the only person who worked on this thing we know of who's still kicking. So tell us what you do know and maybe we can go from there."

"What's in it for me?" Beverly asked.

"Not getting beaten up by a dozen pissed off teenage girls who really want to hit something," the brunette said.

But Beverly wasn't buying it. "No. I don't think so. If I'm the only expert you know, then you need me intact."

"Listen," the brunette said, pounding her fist on the metal table so hard that it bent. Ah. Another one like Vi.

"Hold it, Faith," the guy with the eyepatch said in calm, reasonable tones.

"Good cop, bad cop," Jack said to Giles.

"Something of that sort. Only I believe you have the roles reversed."

The man continued to speak calmly. "We don't need you intact. We need your brain, your mouth, and maybe your hands. Your legs, on the other hand, are fair game."

"You're bluffing," Beverly said confidently.

"Is he bluffing?" Jack asked.

"We do not torture any but the irredeemable."

Which wasn't quite an answer to his question, but Beverly, while definitely one of the bad guys, wasn't – quit – irredeemable. She had a conscience. A small one, but small ones qualified.

Beverly, though looking a little unsure of herself, was calling their bluff. "No. I don't think you're going to hurt me."

"You'll find out," the man with the eyepatch said, and then he and Faith left the room – not before Faith made a point of forcing the table back to more or less its original shape. Beverly looked shaken for a split second after they left, but looked at the mirror and quickly composed herself – so quickly that anyone who didn't know her might not have noticed.

A few seconds afterward, Faith and eyepatch guy walked into their room. "Well, Giles, I – hello," eyepatch guy said, seeing Jack.

"Hi," Jack said back.

"How did he get his gun back?" Faith said, obviously not happy and sounding like she was perfectly willing to pound him into the floor if she didn't like the answer.

"He's obviously holding me hostage," Giles said sarcastically.

"You gave it to him," Faith said.

"Yes," Giles said. "Sheriff Jack Carter, this is Faith and Xander,"

Faith nodded. "Hey." He and Xander shook hands.

"Well, I can't exactly it's good to meet you, considering how I got here, but –"

Xander chuckled. "Yeah. I get that."

"Look," Jack said. "You guys want something out of Beverly. I just want Beverly in custody and back in Eureka. Tell me why you brought her here. There might be something I can do."

"No offense, Jackie," Faith said, "But you ain't a scientist."

"No, but I know a whole lot of them, and I've dealt with enough scientific problems that even if it's not something I've dealt with, I probably know someone who's an expert." Especially because, if they brought Beverly in, it had to have something do with people's minds being screwed with, somehow.

"What do you think, Giles?" Xander asked.

"I think we need all the help we can get," Giles said. "And I doubt Sheriff Carter's going to hold us over a barrel in exchange for whatever help he can give. Unlike Ms. Barlowe, in there."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I've already told you what I want: Beverly to go to jail. Oh -and by the way, Beverly _thinks_ you're bluffing, but she was a little shaken by the way you broke and fixed the table. It only showed up for a split second, but it definitely showed." At this, Faith gave an evil grin.

They looked at each other for a second until Giles turned on his heel and said, "Very well. Sheriff, come with me. Xander, Faith: Continue to occupy Ms. Barlowe's time, if you would."

"I'm gonna go get me a piece of rebar," Faith said, still grinning. "They never seem to buy into what we can do until I bend a piece of rebar."

"Do what you must," Giles said. "Sheriff?"

They walked out the door, down one hallway, and then another one. They passed a few people, who gave his gun a questioning look but didn't say anything. The more he saw of this place – whatever it was – the more he was convinced it was, in fact, a former nursing home. He asked as much.

"Indeed, you are correct, Sheriff," Giles said. "We needed a headquarters in this vicinity and this place met the most of our needs of anything we could find."

If Jack had any follow-up questions, he didn't get to ask them, because Giles said, "Here we are," and opened a door.

Inside were two young women. One, with reddish-brown hair, was sitting down and reading a humongous book; the other, a shorter blonde, was sitting in front of a TV, watching a rerun of _Dharma & Greg,_ and occasionally moving her hands for no reason Jack could see.

""This," Giles said, "Is Buffy and Dawn Summers, Buffy. Dawn?"

"Yes?" They said as one, their heads moving in unison –

Hold it. The hand gestures the blonde was making looked a whole lot like turning the page of a book. And they hadn't said yes almost at the same time, they'd said it exactly at the same time.

"Okay," Jack said casually. "Which one of you is Buffy and which one of you is Dawn?"

They confirmed his suspicions by answering, at the same time, "Buffy here – I'm the one watching TV, and me, I'm Dawn, I'm the one spending this enforced downtime, you know, learning, oh, don't give me that, not ten minutes ago you had your nose buried in a _Cosmo_ –"

As the bizarre argument continued, Giles said, "You see the problem."

"Yeah, I do. Do you guys have any idea what caused it?"

When Buffy and Dawn began to answer, Jack said, "Just Giles, please. I don't need it in stereo." And, as the two retreated into a sulky silence – well, at least one of them was sulking – Giles explained that there were some kind of microscopic machines inside Buffy and Dawn that were causing them to have control over each other's actions, although not each other's thoughts, and that they'd traced it to a project called the Initiative –

"Willow told us about that. Mad doctor trying to create her own army of Frankenstein Monster super-soldiers, right?" Jack said.

"In essence, although that was not the only iron Dr. Walsh had in the fire. Her intent with this was to have a back-up plan: a way to remotely control Buffy. She died before she could take advantage of it, and for lack of anyone to control her, the machines lay dormant in her blood for years, Somehow Dawn was infected as well, and you see the result."

If this wasn't related to the thingy Beverly had used to take control of Allie, Jack would eat his hat.

"Can I make a phone call?"

"You know someone who can fix this?" Giles asked.

"Yeah. I do." A simultaneous, "Yay!" from Buffy and Dawn, followed by a "You sure?"

"I'm sure," Jack said. "And if you're worried I'm trying to pull fast one, you can listen in on the call."

"No need. I trust you. And there's a phone right there."

So Jack made the call. "Allie? Hi. Conference going well? Good. Hey, I need a favor . . ."


	25. Nor the Battle to the Strong

"Jack?" Allie said. "Why are you calling me from Maryland?"

"That," Jack Carter said, "is a long story, and one you wouldn't believe even with everything we've gone through." He said in an aside to Giles, "The line's not secure, is it?"

"Actually, it is," he said. "Willow spent a great deal of time both magically and electronically assuring it was so. I doubt even the NSA could force their way in."

"And Allie carries a Global phone. Probably no one who isn't the Scarlet Witch could hack into it. So I think we're good." Giles started very slightly when Jack said "Scarlet Witch." Why –

Son of a bitch.

_Willow Rosenberg was the Scarlet Witch_. Jack shook his finger at a surprised Giles for a few seconds angrily before returning to his call with Allie. He still wanted to help Buffy and Dawn Summers, regardless.

"Jack?" Allie said.

"Sorry about that. Just figuring something out. They swear the line's secure, so . . ." he gave her a thirty-second summary, minus the magic, and ended up with, "and am I crazy, or does that sound like the way Beverly controlled you?"

"It does," she confirmed. "A little more primitive, maybe, if these girls are able to retain their autonomy and memories, but it's certainly related. Good thinking."

Despite his mood, he smiled. Hearing praise from Allie for his intelligence always made him happy. "Thanks. So, you probably know what I'm going to ask next."

"I've already booked the flight," she said. "It gets in around 7:30 at BWI. And Jack? I'll handle Beverly." She said the last part fiercely.

"You'll probably have better luck. Okay. See you in a few hours."

The he hung up and turned to Giles. "Two things. One, that was Dr. Allison Blake. She was the victim of something similar about a year back; Beverly essentially remote controlled Allie to try to steal as much information as possible about GD projects, and after we finally got rid of her Dr. Blake and the whole medical team studied them to make sure no one could use them on us again. She can fix them."

"Thank you," he said. "And one implies two."

"What? Right. About a week ago, someone really good started breaking into Global Dynamics files, looking mostly at the medical records. Then a few days later a red-headed witch pulls some strings with the Army and gets herself and her friend jobs with GD, and within days we're all dropping everything to go chasing after Beverly."

"Who is someone I believe you wanted to catch anyway," Giles said.

"That's not the point!" Jack said.

"And what is the point?" Giles asked calmly.

"Willow Rosenberg is the Scarlet Witch. The Scarlet Witch hacked into GD computers. Which is a crime against national security, at the very least."

The temperature in the hallway dropped about twenty degrees; at least, that's how it felt. "Are you making a threat, Sheriff?" He'd already figured Rupert Giles for more dangerous than he looked; he wouldn't be in charge of a group of women who could pound him into paste unless he had a lot going for him. Now, Jack got the impression that if Giles didn't like Jack's answer, that being a bloody smear on the floor would be the least of his worries.

Still. Jack hadn't made it through five years in Eureka by being easily cowed; he'd faced death and dismemberment on a weekly basis, pretty much ever since he showed up. "No; a threat sounds like, ' Back off and quit trying to bully me, or else.' I realize that, maybe apart from that kid Andrew, I may be the weakest person in the building. But you know what? I've spent the last five years of my life in a town where the average five-year old is smarter than I am, and I've managed to survive pretty well. So if you think any of you are going to _intimidate _me, you picked the wrong damn person to try it on."

Jack took a breath and continued, "And to repeat myself: No, that wasn't a threat. I get that you guys are the good guys. But I'm kind of obligated, now that I've figured it out, to tell, at the very least, the head of GD. Who's one of the people in on your secret. And it's up to him what we're going to do about it. But you know what? All of this could have been avoided. Very easily."

"Oh. How?" Giles said shortly.

"_You could have just asked us_! It's what we do, in Eureka. You didn't need to go through all this corporate espionage mumbo-jumbo."

"And had you said no?"

Jack knew better. "We wouldn't have."

"It was not a risk we could take."

"Well, maybe it's one you should have," Jack said. "My advice right now? Stick Beverly in a cell somewhere and wait for Dr. Blake to fly in. Her flight's due in at 7:30. Then we can take care of the immediate problem and worry about what's going or not going to happen to Willow, later. Okay?"

Giles clearly wasn't happy, but Jack had read him right. "Very well. We will send a car -"

"And if Allie doesn't see me, she's going to be _very_ suspicious, and then we're all back at square one, except Willow and Vi are on the west coast and I'm here in the land of crabcakes." When Giles didn't say anything, Jack said, "Do you think I'm going to try to sneak off _now_?"

"Very well. Faith and Xander will be ready to drive you at 6:30. Our dining room is down the hall and to the right. Word of warning: Do not try some of the more exotic cuisines. Our cook is solid on the staples but his enthusiasm for experimental cooking is matched only by his lack of skill at it."

"Thanks," Jack said. "I'm a burgers and fries guy, anyway."

XxXxX

The next couple of hours were not the most pleasant of Jack's life. The burger and fries were fine. Everything else made Jack feel like he was a mouse being stalked by a couple of dozen barely restrained cats. He could distinguish the Slayers from the non-Slayers, though; the Slayers were like amped-up versions of Jo getting ready for a fight.

Still, if Rupert Giles hadn't intimidated him, he wasn't going to let these young women do it, either. And they stayed away from him until the one who'd been watching him when he woke from his coma grabbed him and threw him against the wall when he was looking for a place to watch ESPN for a few minutes.

"Can I help you?" he gasped.

"Let Willow go or I'll break your legs."

Well, she didn't bother with subtlety. "I can't exactly let anyone go."

"I'm not in the mood for jokes," she snarled.

"Yeah," Jack said. "This is how I like to do my comedy routines. Listen. Are you going to trust a promise I make now when you're threatening to beat me up?"

"You know what we can do."

"And you don't know what we can do," Jack said. "You break my legs, you'll probably start a war. I'd really kind of like to avoid that."

"Kennedy!" he heard a voice say sharply. "What are you doing?" He heard footsteps, running towards them.

"Protecting Willow."

"By beating up a cop?"

"Whatever I have to to keep Willow safe."

The man who'd spoken came into view. He was bald, black, and was about a foot taller than Kennedy. "Do you really think this is going to keep Willow safe? Put him down."

"Not until –"

"_Now_."

With extremely bad grace, Kennedy let Jack go and stormed off down the hall. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," the man said. "Robin Wood." He and Jack shook hands. "I can't exactly say it's nice to meet you, but this is a touchy enough situation without making things worse. Kennedy's more demonstrative than most of us are going to be – but then, Willow's not our girlfriend. Still, you get why we're concerned."

Girlfriend? That did explain the anger; if someone was making noises about what might happen to Allie after she'd done something like what Willow had, Jack wouldn't exactly be at his most rational. And certainly Allie would do what Willow had done, and more, if it meant protecting someone she loved.

But she would have gone through channels first. Jack knew the virtue of not taking no for an answer. Still, to get to that point, you had to actually ask the question first. These people hadn't bothered.

He thanked the man again, asked him if there was a place he could catch ESPN, and headed for that TV.

XxXxX

The ride to BWI was mostly made in silence, although Xander did say, "What do we need to do to make sure Willow's not going to get in trouble?"

Were they going from stick to carrot? If so, Jack wasn't really up for bribery any more than he was extortion. Jack said as much.

"We ain't trying to bribe you," Faith said. "We're trying to negotiate."

"Okay. Then I'm the wrong person to negotiate with. You're going to have to talk to Fargo, and yes, I have to tell him. I'll certainly say that I think you did what you did for what you did for the right reasons, but honestly, you guys need to work on your diplomacy." After a second he added, "If you think I'm going to spill your secrets, I didn't get this national security clearance because I blab. Remember, I only _look _like a small-town sheriff."

"Okay," Xander said. "I get that."

"Good," Jack said with a sense of relief.

Picking up Allie, at least, went well. She was on a call when they got there, saying, "Okay. Thanks. I'll let them know," and hung up when Jack got there.  
She waited until they were back in the SUV before she asked, "I'm still not sure how you got to Baltimore so quickly."

"I didn't run here, I didn't fly here, I didn't burrow, and I wasn't carried by a big giant."

She was no fool. "Teleportation?" Jack nodded. "But that's not allowed."

"It is, the way these people do it," Jack said. "Trust me."

"I do," she said. "Now – Xander – Faith – right?" When they confirmed that she'd gotten their names right, she said, "Good. Now tell me what you know about what happened."

They gave Allie a much more detailed summary than he had; it took them most of the way back to the nursing home – ah. It was called the Unbroken Academy. Good to remember just in case.

Giles was waiting for them at the door. "Dr. Blake? Rupert Giles. Good to meet you, and thank you for your assistance."

"You're welcome. So, where are the Summers sisters?"

"Right this way." Within a couple of minutes, they were at the sisters' room. "Buffy, Dawn: This is Dr. Allison Blake. She believes she can fix the problem."

"Thank God," they said at the same time. "No offense. None taken," the last said sarcastically. "But you're probably glad I can't read your mind right now. I don't read short stories. Oh, ha ha."

"Is it always like this?" Allie asked.

"No; occasionally they get into real arguments," Giles answered.

"I meant the condition."

Buffy and Dawn said simultaneously, "It didn't start out with us being each other freaky puppet-masters, but it's been like that for a while. It doesn't stop. I jump, she jumps; I turn my head – "

"I think I understand," Allie said. "And if it's anything like mine, I know how to fix it. Do you have a lab where I can work?"

"We have a staff doctor; you can use his office," Giles said. "I'm afraid we may not have the equipment you're used to."

"I was afraid of that. We really would be better off back in Eureka – but that can't happen." As Jack was about to ask why _she_ would think it couldn't, she smiled. "Fortunately, I always come prepared. Jack, could you go get my luggage?"

"What do you have in there?"

"Maybe not everything I need, but enough," she said. "Also, I'm going to need to talk to Beverly to see what the differences are. This is clearly a prototype of the one used on me."

"She won't help," Faith said. "Here're the keys, Jackie boy," she said as she tossed them to him.

"Yes. She will," Allie said.

"Why?"

"Because she owes me."


	26. Loop the Loop

Yes, Sheriff Carter's sojourn in MD has taken a bit longer than I thought, but he'll be back in Eureka before this chapter's over.

XxXxX

"I owe you? Really?"

Allie was facing Beverly in the Unbroken Academy's interrogation room; it was about 9 PM that night. An hour of testing had confirmed, no surprise, that what was affecting the Summers sisters was exactly what they thought: nanobots designed to let someone remotely control someone else. Allie had just walked into the room; Jack was with her, to provide whatever moral/physical support was necessary.

What had seemed like half the people at the Academy had tried to crowd into the observation room until Giles had ordered everyone but him, Xander and Faith to go find other things to do. Kennedy was nowhere in sight; apparently she was out taking out her frustrations on the local vampire population.

He'd pity the vampires, if they were worth pitying.

He and Allie had told Mr. Giles in no uncertain terms that anything they heard that they didn't know about it, they weren't going to know about from asking them.

"Unless you plan to take over or destroy the world, or attempt to redo Dr. Walsh's experiments, we're not interested."

"Good. Then we're set."

Then he and Allie had come into the interrogation room, and after Beverly covered her surprise at seeing them both, she'd attempted small talk with that tone of voice that indicated she knew damn well why were there and wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of asking first.

So be it. It was probably the only victory she was going to get today.  
When she asked why she owed them, Allie was more than ready with an answer. "Yes. You do."

"Okay, I'm willing to play along. Why?"

"Are you actually going to make me explain it?"

Beverly said, "I think I know what your answer's going to be, but I'd like to see if I'm right. So yes. Explain it for me."

"Okay. You took over my body for a week. I was a prisoner in my own skull. All I could do was watch as you screwed over the entire town. Which is something you've done over and over. You keep telling us that you're not one of the bad guys; that you're working towards some kind of higher cause, the greater good of everyone. Take a look at your actions, Beverly. Are those the actions of someone working for the common good, or someone so devoted to a cause that they're willing to do anything for it? And don't bother giving me the omelet and egg answer." Allie said all of this calmly, never once raising her voice.

"Okay—"

"I'm not done," Allie continued. "The thing is, I don't think you're a hypocrite. I think you genuinely do think of yourself as being on the side of virtue and nobility in all of this."

"It's how you got Dr. Grant on your side," Jack said. "You told him that without him around Eureka had become a tool of the military and that you were a group of people trying to make it right. So tell me: How'd that work out for you?" He snapped his fingers. "Oh, that's right. When you tried it with Dr. Grant, Allison died and we practically had to pull off a miracle to bring her back, and when you hooked up with Senator Wen, Holly Marten died, and she's not coming back."

"Believe me. I am genuinely sorry for Dr. Marten's death. That I had anything to do with it appalls me," Beverly said. And Jack believed her, to an extent. She wasn't a sociopath and she clearly hadn't considered it an "acceptable loss." "But," she continued, "I made up for that by helping you pull the plug on the whole operation. And about you, I –"

"Never mind about me. Forget about me. In fact, forget about everything else you've done. Let's just stick with the hijacking. Do you really think that one good deed makes up for all the bad ones?" Allie asked. "And more to the point, do you really think shutting down an operation you were instrumental is starting in the first place is restitution for getting someone killed?"

"And you didn't even do that by yourself," Jack added. "So yeah, you get a little credit. A little. Enough that you have us talking to you instead of Faith in here breaking your legs with a piece of rebar. And she can do it."

"I know," Beverly said. "I saw her bend one earlier. I'd love to know how she did it."

"Don't hold your breath," Jack said.

"So is that enough? Or do I need to get into what you owe me personally for everything you did to me?" Allie asked.

"I thought you said to forget about you," Beverly said.

"And now I want you to remember. Really, Beverly. Pay attention."

"So are you appealing to my sense of right and wrong, or my sense of fair play?"

Allie sighed. "And your sense of not wanting to get your legs broken. Because I think some of those people out there really will hurt you to get you to help. So, do this because it's the right thing, do this because you owe me, or do it because yo don't want to get your legs shattered. I honestly don't care about your motivations. But _do it_, already."

There was dead silence in the room for a few minutes; long enough that Jack was wondering if Beverly was giving them the silent treatment. "So," he said. "Are you going to answer?"

"Give me a second," Beverly said.

"You've had 185 of them. That's enough," Allie said.

Beverly said, "Fine. I'll help. Not because my goals were wrong, but because of what happened. To you, to Holly Marten."

"I said I didn't care why. I meant it. Okay. Let's talk."

"I'm going to need to see them," she said.

"Okay. Let's go."

They all stood up; to Jack's mild surprise, no one in the observation room did anything to stop them," although they did line up both ahead of and behind Beverly as they walked down the hall.

The Summers sisters were having a late-night snack when they came in. "Buffy, Dawn," Giles said, "Ms. Barlowe has agreed to help us."

They said, "You worked with Maggie Walsh?" in a hostile tone. "Giles, when she's done, can we hit her?"

"No, Buffy," Giles said.

"I said that, not Buffy," they said.

"I'm not going to exonerate myself entirely," Beverly said. "I didn't realize she was trying to develop super-soldiers. I would have never helped her."

"You don't exactly have a lot of credibility there," Xander said.

"Actually, on that, she's probably telling the truth," Allie said. "One of the things she hates the most is the way we work so closely with the Department of Defense."

"Then why were you working with the army?" Buffy and Dawn asked.

"I hadn't been at Eureka that long and I couldn't afford to yell and scream too loudly about anything. Not if I was going to keep my job. I've seen enough. Here's what I can tell you."

And she went on to start talking about things in terms Jack didn't really understand, and Allie answered in kind. After a couple of minutes – with no one in the room except Giles and Dawn able to follow along at all – Jack tugged on Allie's sleeve and said, "You good for now?"

"We're good for now," she said. "This is going to take a little longer because we don't have the equipment here we do back home, but I think, with Beverly's help, we should be able to get the Summers sisters cleared of their nanobot infection by tomorrow morning."

"Damn time," Faith said.

"Indeed," Giles said.

"In that case, I'm going to need somewhere to sack out," Jack said. "And then we're going to need to get home."  
"We'll talk about that tomorrow morning," Allie said. "Buffy, Dawn, are you going to have any problem getting to the doctor's office from here?"

"C'mon, Jackie boy," Faith said. "I'll get you to bed." She said it flirtatiously, but laid it on thick enough that Jack could tell she wasn't serious.

"Do anything other than show him a place to sleep and I'll have to hurt you," Allie said.

She sounded serious enough that Faith said, "I wasn't serious."

"I was."

Jack smiled, and followed Faith out of the room.

XxXxXx

He woke up the next morning at about 6 AM. Sometime during the night, Allie had come in there with him, because she was curled up next to him. Carefully – he had no idea how much sleep she'd had – he got up, not disturbing her; quickly washed up, put his uniform back on, and walked into the hall.

Kennedy was sitting, leaning on the opposite wall. "Listen," Jack said. "My fiancee's in there, so if you're going to threaten me again, could you do it quietly? I'm sure she didn't get much sleep."

"Walk with me," she said quietly.

"Why?"

"Because I want to apologize."

Jack nodded, and they began walking. "I will never say I'm sorry for trying to protect Willow," she said. Well, so far, if this was an apology, it wasn't a very good one. Though it was still better than getting slammed against a wall. "I am sorry, though, about attacking you. You're doing your job. I've got the right to argue with you, but trying to hurt you was going a little too far."

"A little?"

"Don't push it," she said.

"Noted. Look. I understand why you did what you did. So I wasn't expecting you to be sorry for your reason for doing it, anyway. The rest of it, thanks. Apology accepted."

"Good. Don't hurt Willow."

"Do you mind if I yell at her?"

"Yes. But I'm not going to try to stop you."

He said, "Again, good. Hey, are they serving breakfast yet?"

XxXxX

Kennedy wasn't actually willing to eat with him, and he and Andrew were the only ones up; after thirty minutes, he figured out that Andrew was, more or less, Fargo without the genius-level IQ or ambition. He wasn't dumb, and he wasn't a bad kid, but his obsession with geeky things blew Fargo out of the water.

He was grateful to escape.

Allie was awake when he got there. "Everything good with the Summers sisters?"

"I'm going to doublecheck them in about fifteen minutes, but yes, everything was going smoothly when I went to bed. Someone's been watching them all night with instructions to come get me if anything went wrong."

"Beverly?"

"Under guard. She did good work, Jack, even if we had to browbeat her into doing it. It was, indeed, exactly what it sounded like. Once one of Walsh's other experiments got her killed – I'm not too clear on that yet – Beverly was left with the plans for the nanobot control devices and really no one to use them on, and Buffy Summers was left with the nanobots and no one even knowing she could be controlled. How Dawn Summers became infected, I'm also not clear on yet either, but it was only when the devices in her system had fully replicated that they became a problem. Unlike the one Beverly used to control me, which required me to have them in my system and her to be using some kind of control mechanism, this one required nanobots to be in both controller and controllee, with the controller having access to an amplifier that would enable them to take over the actions of their victim. In this case, there was no amplifier, but the nanobots reached out and found others on the same frequency, and that was why the Summers sisters began controlling each others' actions. But with them purged and destroyed, they should be fine."

Jack had actually been able to follow that. "Thanks, Allie. That was dumbed down enough so even I could understand it."

"That was my goal."

Jack clapped his hands. "Okay then. We're done. Time to get home."

"Actually . . ."

"Not time to get home?"

"Well, yes," Allie said," just not quite how you think. I'm headed back to Kansas City at about 10:30 to go catch the end of the conference – – Dr. Klein of Johns Hopkins has come up with a way to fight the common cold and I need to decide whether Eureka's going to recruit him. You're leaving here at 3:08 PM, exactly."

"Okay," Jack said, confused. "Why?"

"Because that's the time you came here yesterday – factoring in the time zone differential. You know that phone call I was on when you picked me up at BWI? That was you."

"_What_?"

"Yes. We're in a time loop right now, although it's not a particularly dangerous one. Willow's spell -"

"How do you know about magic?" Jack asked.

"You told me yesterday. You called me twice, once before you called me from Baltimore, once when the plane landed, and I talked to you, and Jo, and Fargo, who convinced me and told me what I had to do. I've already made arrangements with Mr. Giles to have someone send you and Beverly back to Eureka, California -"

He should have been amazed at how much he wasn't amazed by all of this, but he wasn't – which, he guessed, was amazing in itself. He simply nodded, "Yeah. I was in the middle of a time stop spell when I left. I get it. Apparently I come back in the middle of it, too." He grinned. "Which would make this more of a time loop-the-loop, wouldn't it?"

"Sure, Jack."

Buffy and Dawn were fine. There were no complications, and before Jack helped drop Allie off at BWI, she gave them her phone number with instructions to call her if the symptoms started reappearing, "although they shouldn't."

He pulled Giles aside and said, "Do I need to say 'I told you so,' or is the message clear enough? Next time, if there is a next time, _ask_. We'll help."

"Yes, yes, you don't need to rub it in," he said. "The same applies in reverse, incidentally, although according to Willow your town is surprisingly free of supernatural influences beyond a few nature spirits. It might be useful to find out why – assuming we don't have to invade the place to get Willow back, that is." The last part was said with a light tone, but it was clearly deadly serious.

"If you do, could you bring some crabcakes with you? I can't believe I came all the way to Maryland and didn't even get any crabcakes."

"I shall keep that in mind."

By the time 2:50 PM rolled around, Jack was more than ready to go. Buffy and Dawn were grateful, and both threatened him with dismemberment if anything happened to Willow. "Tell me," he said, "Why haven't any of you asked about Vi?"

"Um," Dawn said, "Because she was completely innocent and was dragged along having no idea what was going on?"

"We'll go with that," Jack said. He got why; he'd only mentioned Willow, so maybe they'd been worried that if they mentioned Vi than he'd focus on her. He'd figured out they both had to be part of it about five seconds after Willow had cast the time stop spell.

He got to the room and found Beverly being threatened with pain and agony if she didn't fix the situation at the other end when she got there. For her part, she was bitching that she hadn't even been allowed to shower, but she agreed to do whatever Jack said to defuse the battle. "Good. I'll give you the bullhorn, you tell everyone to stand down and not to listen to any orders you make in the future, and we're good." He clapped his hands. "Okay. One more thing. Does anyone have any handcuffs?" His were in the SUV, in Eureka, California. yesterday.

Everyone in the room turned to look at Faith. "I'm guessin' you don't want the furry kind, right?"

"Yeah, if you could," Jack said.

Faith shook her head. "Damn, but you're hard to embarrass, Jackie boy."

"Long, hard experience," he said.

She came back with the cuffs a couple of minutes later, someone cast a spell, and abruptly, he and Beverly were back in California. Willow looked like she was about to say something, so Jack said, "Hold on," to her, then "Okay, and remember what happens if you do anything else," to Beverly. Beverly grumpily said she would, so he turned to Willow and told her to get the bullhorn and drop the time freeze spell,and explained why when she asked.

Then he went on, "And you, Scarlet Witch, are going to come with us and give us a complete explanation. I think we're entitled to that. Don't you?"

She gasped out a stunned "Why?"

"Why? Because if you teleport out of here we will track you down and throw you in a hole so deep that the devil will be your upstairs neighbor. Or, to quote your friend Dawn – who's all better, by the way – a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend." He smiled. "That good enough for you?"


	27. Am I Spartacus?

Jo Lupo had no idea exactly what was going on. Willow, Carter and Beverly had flickered out and back, moving a few feet, and it looked like Jack had cuffed Beverly. Before she could do more than order her troops to keep firing and then take a step towards them, Willow had picked up the bullhorn that Beverly had dropped and –

handed it to her? What the hell?

Still, she trusted Carter, almost enough not to have her hand on her weapon when Beverly started talking.

"Attention! Citizens of Eureka!" she said. "Stop attacking. Stop attacking." She hadn't needed to say it a second time. Everyone stopped and stood in place. Jo waved for her troops to lower their weapons. Beverly kept speaking, though. "Also: After I'm done, don't follow any orders I give you from this point forward. Thank you."

The local Eurekans dropped any weapons they were carrying. Some turned around and headed for their cars or houses. Some just stood around.

And some charged, this time at Beverly instead of at her or the GD troops.

Carter grabbed the bullhorn out of Beverly's hands and yelled, "Okay, knock it off!" To Jo, he quickly said, "Only if you have to." Jo nodded and spread the word. She trusted these people to wait until they had no choice.

In the meantime, Willow was getting something out of her pocket, and Vi – who'd helped the local cops to their feet once they stopped fighting her – came over and stood next to them. The cops weren't attacking, but they weren't retreating either. Jo tapped a couple of her troops to keep an eye on them, just in case they decided to start something – they were closer than anyone else, and almost certainly better trained.

Some of the people stopped. Some didn't. One of the ones who'd stopped yelled, "Who the hell are you?"

"Federal agents." Well, he wasn't exactly wrong. "And we're going to make damn sure this woman gets what's coming to her. Ma'am! Sir!" He yelled at two people. "One more step and they'll shoot!"

"You heard the man," Jo told her troops. "Low power, but be ready."

The threat of firing on the locals got the cops moving. They started to pull their service revolvers. Jo yelled, "Jack! Behind you!"

The troops she'd designated to keep an eye on them raised their weapons, but Vi was faster. She leapt at them and disarmed three of the four before they had a chance to clear their holsters. The fourth, however, was a bit further away, and had her revolver drawn, pointing it in Vi's and Jack's direction. "Okay," she said. "You don't know what that woman did to us. To all of us." Everyone went quiet and stopped.

"Slavery," Willow said. "She enslaved you." Beverly was about to open her mouth, but a sharp look from Carter quieted her down. The last thing they needed right now was her mucking things up. Carefully but quickly, she, drew her own weapon. "Slavery is almost as unforgivable as anything can be."

"Yeah," she said. "Do you think we're going to let her go off to some nice comfortable federal prison after this?"

"After this?" Willow said. "You think she's going to a comfortable federal prison? They're going to bury her so deep that the devil'll be her upstairs neighbor. If she's lucky."

Carter said, "Hey!" for some reason.

"Not good enough," the woman said.

"She's wanted for every crime I can think of except rape, drug dealing and piracy on the high seas," Carter said. "It'll have to be good enough. Because you're not leaving here with her. Put your gun down. We don't want a war."

The officer gestured towards the dozens of GD troops. "Okay," Carter said. "I realize it might look like it. But that's just how dangerous we knew she might be. And we obviously weren't wrong. Come on. I promise, we'll tell you whatever we can." That wasn't likely to be a whole hell of a lot, but if it didn't satisfy them, they'd have to stun her and deal with the consequences. She told the two troops nearest her to fire if, in their judgment, the officer was about to open fire. Don't hesitate, don't wait for her orders, if they had to, just do it.

The tension in the air was thick enough you would have needed a chainsaw to cut it. They'd already had hell break loose on them twice today, and that wasn't even counting whatever the hell had happened to Willow, Jack, and Beverly.

The officer held her weapon pointed at Beverly for about ten more seconds. It was quieter than Jo could have imagined in the middle of a large crowd – the only sound she could hear were distant birds and traffic noises.

They were ready to fire if they had to.

They didn't have to.

The woman lowered her weapon and reholstered it. Vi again stepped forward and helped her friends to their feet.

Right then, as everyone began to breathe a collective sigh of relief, a modified pickup trip came barreling around the corner and slammed on its brakes. Taggart stepped out. "Hey there," he called out jovially. "What'd I miss?"

XxXxX

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dukes, Ms. Anderson," Douglas Fargo said, "Normally I wouldn't interrupt our conversation, but this is about a project of the highest delicacy. If you would?"

"You're asking us to leave?" Dukes asked.

"Normally, I wouldn't, but I'm barely cleared for this call. Ask Larry to show you the cafeteria. I'll have you paged as soon as I'm done."

They weren't happy about it, making noises about how important their time was and did he know who they were, but they left. Of course he knew who they were. They were the team no one liked back at the DoD, either, which no doubt was why Eureka and Area 51 saw so much of them. They were good enough at their jobs – Defense didn't hire incompetents for positions dealing with Eureka no matter who they knew – but they were unpleasant and so full of themselves that _Parrish_had called them arrogant assholes.

Well, if anyone knew about arrogant assholes, it would be Parrish.

"Sheriff," he said. "What's the good word?"

"We got her. It was a little more complicated than we might have liked, but we got her."

"How complicated?"

"We're going to need to get NDRs for pretty much the entire city."

Fargo blinked. "How did that happen?"

"Details when we get back – it gets into mind control drugs in the water supply, and a time loop-the-loop, and Allie helping us fix a problem in Warren, Maryland, and Willow being the Scarlet Witch -"

Hold it. "What?"

"Yeah. Like I said. I could probably be explaining it from now till the time we pulled up in front of Global,and you still might not have the full story. The two important things are one, she's in custody – in the back of one of the troop vehicles, cuffed hand and foot, sitting between two unarmed agents and in front of three armed agents who have instructions to stun her if she so much as breathes funny. And two, you need to contact someone to figure out how to handle what happened here in Eureka, California. The locals don't know everything, but they know they were under Beverly's mental control. Anyway, I gotta go. Apparently I have a lot of phone calls to make today. Jo'll be calling you in a few minutes with all the details you can handle about the operation. You'll need to wait till I get there for the rest of it."

"You haven't told her?"

"No. I haven't told anyone, yet. I think Willow's figured something out, but you're all going to hear about it at the same time. See you in a few hours, Fargo."

He hung up, and Fargo quickly told Larry to tell Mr Dukes and Ms. Anderson that he was going to be longer than he originally thought, and that they should probably plan on coming back tomorrow. Then he got their official DoD liaison on the line and said he had something important, that couldn't be shared with Dukes or Anderson, and could he please hold on a second?

The liaison was confused, but agreed to wait. Then Jo called and he wasn't confused any more.

XxXxX

Vi Fisher wasn't sure what was going on, and even after talking to Willow didn't know much more. Jack hadn't clarified anything – intentionally – and Willow had told her everything she'd seen but had no more idea of what had happened when she teleported Beverly Barlowe and (inadvertently) the sheriff to Maryland than anyone else had, other than the time freeze. Jack had told them that Buffy and Dawn were okay, and Vi hadn't pegged him as a casual liar, so that part – the important part – was taken care of.

But somehow he'd figured out Willow was the Scarlet Witch. And heavily implied that she was in trouble. Willow hadn't said a whole lot else; after the crisis was done, she'd fallen into "embarrassed because I really screwed up mode" and wasn't talking to anyone. It had been nearly pulling teeth to get her to say as much as she'd said. That she was also exhausted from having thrown around more magic today than she'd done in a while hadn't helped matters any. She was, by now, fast asleep.

Which made it the perfect time to ask Jack some questions. She waited until he was done a call with Fargo and said, "What about me?"

"What about you, what?"

"Willow's in trouble for being the Scarlet Witch, you said. What about me?"

"Are you the Scarlet Witch?"

"No, but –"

"Then you're not in trouble," he said.

"But I –"

Steamrolling over her, he said, "And it's a good thing I don't know that you were involved in any of this, isn't it? Otherwise you might be in as much trouble as she's in."

Not being stupid, Vi got it. He was trying to avoid having to get Vi into trouble as well. For some reason, Willow hadn't grabbed her and teleported away; she must have had a reason, and horrible embarrassment wouldn't have been enough to keep her from protecting someone else. It couldn't have been a formal arrangement, though; there hadn't been time to make one.

So, an understanding. She was tempted to do an "I am Spartacus" type-thing and also claim to be the Scarlet Witch, but that really only worked when you had a horde of people saying the same thing. Two people could be arrested as easily as one. Okay, maybe not quite as easily as in most cases – she was a Slayer, after all – but if it came down to her needing to use her Slayer powers to get them out of trouble, then things had pretty much been blown to hell anyway, and it wouldn't matter if she'd also said she was the Scarlet Witch. Or Spartacus, for that matter.

"I get it," she said.

"Good." He grinned. "It's good to be on top of things, for once."

"What happened when you were in Maryland?"

"Oh, lots of things," Jack said. "We got your friends Buffy and Dawn cured of their problems; they're not being each other's puppetmasters any more. And Faith flirted with me a bit until my girlfriend told her to knock it off or else."

If Vi hadn't been convinced that the sheriff had been to the Academy, that would have done it. Willow might have told him about Buffy and Dawn, but there was no way she would have mentioned Faith's habit of casually hitting on any reasonably good-looking male within range.

Of course – "A lot of work for five seconds," she said.

"It would be, wouldn't it?"

"And that's as much of a hint as I'm going to get, right?"

"Uh-uh. So, how about those Mariners?"

XxXxX

Feeling a tap on her shoulder, Willow Rosenberg woke up. "We've just passed the Welcome to Eureka sign." It was Vi's voice.

Sleepily, she sat up. "How long?"

"About two hours. You needed it."

"I must have." She'd been half-panicked since the sheriff thrown her own line back in her face, though she'd covered it up long enough to make sure the crisis was over. By the time she'd come down from her adrenaline rush, she could barely move; even without the sheriff's semi-joking threat, she probably couldn't have teleported she and Vi more than about a mile – easily within Taggart's tracking distance, for instance. But as fast as her mind was racing – if her feet were as fast as her mind had been going, she could have given the Flash a run for his money – she was surprised she'd been able to fall asleep at all.

"How long?" she repeated, this time to Sheriff Carter.

"About ten minutes until we get to Global," the sheriff said. "About half an hour after that to make sure Beverly's locked up good and tight and we've taken enough security precautions to keep her from being rescued by anyone short of God himself, and then we'll probably get to you"

"Oh," she said with a small voice. "Okay."

"Look," he finally said, "Am I ticked at you for lying? Yes. But I'm not planning to have you hauled off in irons or anything. What you did, you did for the right reasons. Your method stinks, though."

"So -"

"You're still in trouble," the sheriff said. "But it's the kind of trouble where you're going to get yelled at, not the kind of trouble where you're going to be doing hard time."

"Have you been jerking us around?" Vi demanded.

"No," he said. "I've been letting you stew for a few hours. But enough is enough. I wanted you to think, not suffer. And I don't think I've said this, so I should: Thank you for helping us catch Beverly."

"I was never going to let her go," Willow said.

"I believe you," the sheriff said.

And she believed him.


	28. Your Cheating Art

Jack Carter's smile, as he stepped onto the Global Dynamics parking lot, was a bit less wide than it had been. Willow had actually seemed to be in pain there, and he hadn't meant to do that. He'd wanted her (and Vi) to be thinking about what might happen, but not actually worried that the devil would be a flight up.

She seemed a little better now. That was good.

There were more people in the parking lot than normal, even at the end of what would be a normal workday at a lot of companies. Parrish was standing nearby, so Jack asked, "Do I want to know?"

"What do you think?" Parrish said. "You caught Beverly Barlowe and we want to see the bitch get what's coming to her." Parrish seemed genuinely angry –

Of course. For all of his faults, and he had a lot of them, he'd genuinely liked Holly Marten.

"Okay," Jack said. "I get how angry you are. But you realize we're not just going to string her up here in the parking lot, right?"

"Hanging? Please! That's so 19th century. I'm thinking of an air-proof force bubble." And that's what he wanted to do to Beverly. Senator Wen, he probably wanted to feed her own organs.

Parrish was serious. Wanting to avoid an argument, though, Jack just said, "Wait till the trial's over. Then you can compete to see who can cause her the messiest death."

Snapping his fingers, Parrish said, "That's a terrific idea, Sheriff. Thanks! You know, you're not as dumb as I thought you were."

Jack muttered a sarcastic "Thanks," but Parrish was already rushing off.

Andy walked up. "Welcome back, Boss! Nice job."

"Thanks, Andy. All quiet?"

"Two kids arguing over what level of credit Meucci deserves in the invention of the telephone, but otherwise, it was calm until about a half hour ago."

"Good news travels fast."

"Yes, it does," Andy said. I've checked everyone who's entered the parking lot and no one who shouldn't has any weapons on them. I've never seen the people around here quite so angry."

"They have a lot to be angry about. And thanks for thinking to check."

Andy smiled. "Just doing my job, Boss," and walked off to keep doing it.

Jo was supervising Beverly's exit from her vehicle. Two GD troopers were pointing weapons at her, and another dozen were hanging back. "Wow," she said. "All this for me?"

"You're being allowed to walk in under your own power," Jo said. "If I had my way, I'd knock you out so hard you wouldn't wake up until the trial was over."

Turning her head suddenly, he said, "Jack. You will tell them how I helped those girls, right?"

"Sure," Jack said. Beverly smiled. "I'll them exactly how long it took to get you to help, too." Her smile faded.

Then she looked around and saw everyone gathered around them, most of whom, to say the least, did not look happy to see her. They were yelling and swearing and making death threats. "Can we get inside?" she asked nervously.

"Oh, come on," Jack said. "Don't you want to hang out with your adoring fans?"

Jo yelled, "Incoming!"

Everyone ducked, and Beverly got hit square on the forehead by a tomato. "Look," Jack said, standing up. "Some of them even brought you dinner."

At that point, Jo and the troopers cracked up. Beverly yelled, "That wasn't funny!"

"Oh, come on, it's a little funny." It wouldn't have been a grenade or anything else lethal; Andy'd already seen to that. And the people around here were careless, not casually homicidal, and in any event if Jo had seen something that Andy might not have pegged as a weapon but could still hurt – like a rock – Jo would have been more specific.

"Okay, people!" Jo shouted. "Let's get her inside! And if you see any incoming produce, duck! Don't be a hero!"

As the troops hustled Beverly into the building, Jo slowed down to talk with Jack. "Are we enjoying this too much?"

"I don't think there's such a thing as enjoying this too much." Willow and Vi were still standing next to his SUV. "I'll be in in a minute," he said, and walked over to talk to the young women. "Come one, come all."

"And stand around in the lobby?" Vi asked.

"Yeah, Fargo knows you're coming. He might not know _why,_ but he knows you're coming."

"Why wasn't he out here?" Willow said.

"He didn't trust himself," Vi said. "I get that. Believe me."

"You hid it well," Jack said.

Vi said, "When 'don't kill humans' is drilled into you over and over again, it sticks. Even for people like Beverly Barlowe."

There was enough venom in the way she said "Beverly Barlowe" to bring down a bull elephant. "Okay, cross you of the list of people hunting for Senator Wen," he said.

"Good idea," Vi said.

XxXxX

No, the last fifteen minutes hadn't been awkward, not at all. Neither Willow nor Vi had done much talking since they came into his office, though Fargo and Vi had had a quick moment of solidarity about them catching Beverly. When he'd asked what was going on, Vi'd pulled away and said, "Ask the Sheriff, since he seems to have all the answers anyway."

And that was the end of that. This on top of an afternoon where he'd alternated between apologizing to Dukes and Anderson, and telling them to get lost so he could make or receive important phone calls – like the one he'd had to make to Dr. Blake to confirm something the Sheriff had told her about time travel and magic, even though he didn't have all the details himself. Fargo'd done so – the last experience they'd had with a time loop had killed Nathan Stark – but he still didn't know why.

"You're the Scarlet Witch?" he asked Willow after a few minutes.

"Depends," Vi said before Willow could answer, not that she seemed much inclined to talking anyway. "Is the answer likely to put her in the cell next to Beverly Barlowe?"

"No. No, it isn't."

Finally, Willow answered in more than monosyllables. "Isn't breaking into GD treason?"

"Well, sure, if you want to get technical," Fargo said. "But you clearly weren't trying to swipe our technology or hurt anyone here, and you helped us track down one of the worst criminals in Eureka's history. Oh, sure, you might be guilty of a HIPAA violation, but that's about it."

"HIPAA?" Vi asked.

"The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – protects people's health care information. Technically, as soon as you became a GD employee, any medical data you looked at without good reason or authorization was a violation." After a second, though: "That doesn't mean I'm not upset you broke in, though. I'm not a computer genius like you or Zane but I know more about the security of those systems than anyone. Attacking them successfully was a cut directly at the fiber of my being." Maybe a bit dramatic, but he was serious.

"Then why aren't you angrier?" Willow asked.

"I met you, I like you, and I'm fairly sure you had to have done it using magic, so still no one's managed to successfully break into GD's servers from outside without, well, cheating." He was proud of that.

"Using magic isn't cheating!"

"Well, it's not like there's a set of rules or anything, but at least no one has been able to hack in from the outside without either using non-technological assistance or having someone on the inside. That means it's not inherently a problem with our security system."

Willow said, "You're right. I tried the first time without magic and couldn't make it through. Doesn't make magic cheating, though, it just means it's not something you anticipated. Although, you know, to be fair, you couldn't reasonably have anticipated it. But, if it'll help, I'll fix it so that magic-wielding hackers will also have a tougher time getting in."

Fargo nodded. That would be useful, although, unlike with the earlier exploit Willow had found, it wasn't like he could double-check it; he didn't know any other magic-using computer experts, and the people here thought he was crazy enough already without him openly advertising for a cyberwizard.

Eccentric was one thing; eccentric was expected in Eureka. But there was a higher concentration of skeptics here than there was anywhere else in the United States. Oh, sure, you had the occasional geologist who was also an anti-vaccination fanatic; there was even a creationist among the engineering crew. But magic? He wouldn't have time to be laughed out of town, he'd be run out in a rail. And this being Eureka, they'd build the rail just to do it.

And he, basically, trusted Willow not to screw them.

That's when Sheriff Carter and Jo walked in. "Okay, Carter," Jo said. "Beverly's locked up. You've called Allison again. Fargo called Allison. I called Allison. Now. What the hell happened when you were in Maryland?"

XxXxX

Sheriff Carter began with the "time-freeze," and, over the course of about an hour, explained everything that happened from the time he disappeared until the time he reappeared and told Willow not to go anywhere. It all had the ring of authenticity to it, but Willow was sure the Sheriff hadn't known exactly how close he was to Giles cleaning his clock. Although, to be fair, she didn't think he would have cowered if he had known.

Finally, he wrapped things up with his threat to Willow.

"Would you have?" Willow asked when he was done.

"Would I have what?" he asked.

"Tracked me down and thrown me into a deep hole?"

"Yeah. I would have. And I think Jo and Fargo would have agreed with that one."

Jo said, "Yeah. Me too. We would've let you out soon enough, but we would have had to track you down."

"And we would have been able to do it," Fargo said.

"But you came back with us, you didn't try to run, and your motives were good," the sheriff said. "So, in case it wasn't clear, no deep holes. Not even any shallow ones."

"Good. That would have probably caused the war you wanted to avoid," Vi said.

"I know it," the sheriff said. "So next time, just ask, okay?"

Vi said, "Next time we will. But this time? How could we have known we could completely trust you in advance?"

"You're connected with the Defense Department and you've seen what happened with the Initiative," Willow said.

"I can see why a horrible experience like that would put you off, but it's a long way from 'these military scientists wanted to experiment on people' to 'any scientist connected to the military has to be evil until we can prove otherwise," the sheriff said.

"You could have done some research," Fargo said.

"We did," was Willow's response. "That's how we found Beverly Barlowe. And what was that you said about not hiring evil mad scientists?"

"Fargo wasn't in charge then," Jo said.

With a surprised smile for Jo, Fargo added, "And also, even with a good system like ours someone's going to get through who doesn't match our high standards. That's a near-certainty, statistically speaking."

"One rotten apple – or even a couple – shouldn't spoil the whole barrel," the sheriff said. "We've got enough careless scientists here to fill Safeco Field, but even the meanest of them wouldn't do the kinds of things you're worried about."  
"We get that now," Willow said. "But we couldn't take the risk. We have to assume –"

"That everyone's out to get you?" the sheriff said. "Even in your case where you're fighting off bad guys left, right, and sideways that's a bit on the extreme end of things. Is everyone against you? Are we the first people who've been nice to you?"

"You call threatening to throw me in a dungeon 'nice'?"

"I never said dungeon. I said hole. And you know what I mean. Trust me, given what happened with Beverly and Senator Wen it's not like I'm a cockeyed optimist. But going around assuming you can't trust anyone seems like an overreaction."

"Yeah," Jo said. "I mean, we're all pretty cynical here. But even now, knowing you had another agenda, we're not falling all over ourselves to have you punished. We're ticked, annoyed, and disappointed, but not really angry."

"The problem is, we can't afford to be wrong," Vi said. "One mistake, and we maybe have the government after us again, maybe to draft, maybe to experiment on. It's not ridiculous to think that someone might think that Slayers might make excellent assassins."

"You probably would," Fargo said. "So? I think about things like that all the time. Thinking's not the same as doing – well, most of the time. There was that problem we had with our dreams."

"Did yours come true? Because with us, one kid had spiders come out of his books, and Cordelia became a nerd and had to join the chess club," Willow said.

"No, we just all shared ours," Jo said. "Carter turned up naked in a dream a lot of us were sharing."

"Well, thanks for bringing that up," the sheriff said.

"It's what I live for," Jo said.

"Back to the topic at hand?" Vi said. "Do you see why we couldn't ask?"

"Do you see why we all would have been a lot better off if you had?" the sheriff responded.

No one said anything for about a minute. Willow got what the sheriff was saying; in retrospect, if they'd known, things would have been different. But hindsight was usually 20/20; foresight's a lot trickier. "I think we're going to have to agree to disagree," she finally said.

"Okay," Fargo said. "Still, in the future?"

"In the future we'll knock politely and say please," Willow said.

"Now, as for what's going to happen to you two -" the sheriff said.

"You said no deep holes!" Willow said.

"_No holes at all!_"

"Well -" Fargo said. "Not quite. The only hole you'll have to deal with is the magical one you wormed out in GD's security systems. Other than that? Here's the thing. Vi, we don't have any proof you did anything. And Willow? You did enough to help us that I'm fairly sure we're all willing to say don't do that again, and let things go there."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We'd kind of be assholes to do much of anything else," the sheriff said.

"But I have a couple of conditions."

"Oh?" Vi said suspiciously.

"Yeah. One, we'd like to actually establish some kind of formal relations with the Unbroken Academy. That we we actually _avoid _anything like this happening in the future. Don't worry, it'll be off the books and we won't tell anyone who doesn't know without your express permission. We'd appreciate the same in reverse. Our existence is supposed to be something of a secret, too – at least, our existence as a town full of geniuses."

"Okay . . ." That sounded not only reasonable, but like an actual good idea.

"And two, Willow, while you can go, if you want to, once you finish the upgrade to the security system, Vi, we'd actually like you to stay."

Wait, _what_?


	29. Wait, What?

"Wait, _what_?" Vi said. She was confused. By the looks of things, Willow wasn't doing any better. Saying the last week had been an emotional roller-coaster ride was an insult to roller coasters everywhere. She'd been flung about like a ping-pong ball in a dryer.

"Sheriff Carter," Fargo said. "I've been known to technobabble sometimes. Was anything I said beyond your understanding?" Terrific. He was being a comedian.

Jack didn't particularly seem to appreciate his tone, either. "No,Fargo. Thank you for using the little words," he said sarcastically.

"You're entirely welcome," Fargo said, but from the fast grin on his face it was obvious he was intentionally missing the point.

"I can't figure out what to object to first," Vi said, though she wasn't offended, just stunned.

"How about sacred duty?" Willow said.

"Okay," Vi said. "We'll go with that. I'm a vampire slayer; it's kind of in the job description for me to kill vampires and demons."

"Didn't you say there were like seven hundred vampire slayers out there now?" Jo asked.

Right. "738, last time I checked," Vi said.

"I honestly don't know: Are you all needed all the time?"

Vi opened her mouth – you never knew when a crisis would hit (unlike apocalypses, they didn't tend to cluster around Tuesdays in May) and then closed it again, thinking: Well, Buffy took several months off. Vi didn't blame her at all; Buffy had been Slaying continually for over seven years by that point. And if Buffy could, it at least wouldn't be unreasonable for her to make the suggestion. "No. Good point."

"Aren't about a tenth or so on reserve?" Vi asked.

"Yeah," Willow said. "I suppose Sacred Duty does get easier when it's split up, you know, seven hundred ways."

"Still: Why do you want me? Because, no offense, Jo, but I don't do security work."

Jo blinked. "Sure. And I'd be thrilled if you wanted to join up. But we don't draft, here. This isn't the army." Then, quietly enough that Vi was sure that no one else in the room heard her, she muttered, "Unfortunately." If Vi was reading the tone right, though, it was nostalgia for the army, not a secret desire to force her into security work.

"We have security personnel fighting to get in here," Fargo said.

"Literally," Jack said. When everyone looked at him, he said, "What? I've seen the interviews."

"Anyway," Fargo said, "It has nothing to do with magic, or you being a Slayer, and everything to do with your skill as a plant biologist. I asked Dr. Peterson to send me a preliminary report on your theories for how to help eradicate giant hogweed from North American soil, and based on that report, we both think your idea is viable."

"Really?" Despite her skepticism, this excited Vi.

"Yes. Some fine-tuning will be necessary, of course, but if the experiment has the results we believe it will, then it could greatly simplify the way we deal with hundreds of different invasive species. It would have to be retailored for each plant, of course, and there are some plants that your theory won't work on, but I'm actually quite excited by it."

"Cool!" She looked over at Willow. "Willow? What do you think?"

Willow said, "We're going to have to talk about that with everyone – but I don't have a problem with it. Me, though, I'd have to be temporary – Kennedy."

Vi nodded her head. "Yeah, I can't see Kennedy being particularly happy here." Understatement. She liked Kennedy – brash, yeah, but she'd done a good job leading the New York contingent; she still had a hair trigger emotionally where Willow was concerned, but otherwise was a lot better than she was when they met. "check that: I can't even see her wanting to come – except for one reason." The obvious one.

"Yeah. And I can't do that to her," Willow said.

"Kennedy?" Jo asked. "The one who threatened you, Carter? Why would she have to come here?"

"Didn't I mention that?" Jack said. Quadruple in-unison shakes of heads indicated he hadn't, although Vi and Willow obviously knew why. "Yeah. Kennedy's Willow's girlfriend."

"That would explain it," Jo said.

"Yeah," Willow said. "And she'd come if I asked her, but even if she joined the security team she'd be bored out of her mind here within a week within no vampires to kill, plus she's kind of in charge of the Slayers based out of New York City right now, and doing a darn good job of it if I say so myself. But speaking of bored out of your mind – Vi, how would you be able to deal with it?"

"Deal with what?" Jack asked.

"Slayers have something inside them urging them to go out and hunt demons," Vi said. Just like with all things with Slayers, they had it to a greater or lesser degree. Buffy, for instance, was heavy on the Slayer dreams, light on the ability to mystically sense vampires. Vi had the urge, just not to the extent some of the Slayers seemed to. She'd seen some of her fellow Slayers practically tear a hole in the walls with their teeth if something kept them from going out and hunting two nights in a row, like a broken limb. Vi, though, wasn't nearly that bad. "That's what Taggart caught me doing in the woods – I was seeing if there was anything evil out there that needed Slaying. Like we said, this is the cleanest down, demonwise, I think I've ever seen. A few nature spirits in the woods is about it. But I've been able to vent my urges well enough, through jogging with you, Jo, and the runs through the woods." And hitting the other Eureka's police, but she didn't want to give them the idea that she'd explode in a burst of violent rage if she didn't get to beat someone up once in a while.

"So you could handle it?" Jo asked.

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure I could."

Willow stood up. "Okay. Do you mind if we think on it?" Vi bit back complaining that Willow was answering for her. Excited as Vi would be to be able to stay in Eureka, it was only partly her call.

"Of course not," Fargo said. "And about the possibility of, well, diplomatic relations between our two groups?"

"I don't see why not," Willow said. "Whether or not we agree that we –" she pointed to Vi and herself –"should have asked for help in advance, I think that would be a good idea. Based on your story, though, Sheriff, you, probably not the best choice to be a diplomat."

"I like my current job just fine, thanks."

As Vi and Willow headed for the door, Fargo said, "See you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early," Willow said.

"Spit in Beverly Barlowe's face at least once for me," Vi said.

"I'll do it twice," Jo said.

XxXxX

The discussion that evening with everyone back at the Academy was hectic, to say the least; everyone in the senior circle was there at the other end, so Buffy, Xander, Faith, Dawn, Giles and Kennedy joined Vi and Willow to hash things out. Willow didn't really think that the Eurekans were going to listen in, but just to be on the safe side, she magically scrambled the call. All anyone listening in would hear was a long discussion about whether the Enterprise could take the Death Star, with a sideline in whether Spock would make a good Jedi.

"First things first," Buffy said. "Thanks. I know things didn't work out quite like we planned -"

"Do they ever?" Xander said. "I mean, really. We can count 'times our plans went off without a hitch' on one hand. And that's without getting into the whole 'is a thumb a finger' argument."

"But," Buffy continued, ignoring Xander, "We're cured. And you're not going to jail. And that Barlowe woman is. So yay, us."

"You gonna do what they ask and plug up the hole?" Faith asked.

"I think so," Willow said. "It'll help them in case people who're less good guys than we are try to break in. And any hole I can fill up, I can unfill – though I'm kind of hoping we don't go that route."

Giles said. "Yes. They wish to establish diplomatic ties. I must ask: Did they make any threats, open or implied?"

"No," Vi said firmly. "No implications, hints, suggestions, or anything of the sort. But now that, at the very least, five people there are in on the existence of magic and the supernatural, I think it's a good idea for us to stay friendly. This isn't the first time we've run into superscience as the issue, and while Eureka's the most demon-free place I've ever been, that doesn't mean it'll always be that way."

"Is it really that clean?" Kennedy asked.

"There were more demons at the Vatican," Vi said. Willow hadn't been along on that trip, but apparently a group of ambitious vampires with far more guts than sense had holed up in Vatican city with some half-baked theory of converting the Catholic hierarchy and getting them to abandon the use of the cross, thus being heroes to vampires everywhere. To say it had failed was a massive understatement. "At least we might want to find out why. Sure, Taggart explained why there weren't any vampires, but there's a whole lot more than vamps out there."

"Maybe they thought it was too cliché," Dawn said. "You know, vampires, the Pacific Northwest . . ."

"Naaah," Faith said. "That'd bring more of 'em there, trying to sucker in the young, innocent and stupid."

"Back to the subject," Giles said. "Despite the, um, somewhat rocky start, there may be benefits in at least establishing informal relations with Eureka. Providing we believe that they will not try to exploit any of us, of course."

"I couldn't find any evidence when I was looking through their records of any experiments like that, except, you know, the one we just dealt with, and that was just Beverly Barlowe, anyway," Willow said

"Not that I don't trust your judgment, Will – or yours, either, Vi – but I think this is something we'd need to be pretty damn sure of," Xander said.

Willow said, "We can't make them unknow it without throwing forget spells around. And you know that's never going to happen." Everyone knew her position on forget spells. People brought it up at their peril.

"No one's suggesting that," Buffy said. "At least, I hope they're not."

"Nothing of the sort," Giles said. "But I believe we need a clearer picture of the histories of these people."

"You said you're going to shut down the hole you used, right?"

"Right," Willow said.

Dawn said, "So, before you do, just look through the records once more."

"And while you're at it, sweetie," Kennedy said. "Check the experiments too. Barlowe, when she was here, said she didn't know exactly what the Initiative people were up to. Doesn't mean she's telling the truth, but if these are good people it doesn't mean that everyone underneath them is as good as they are."

She had a point, Willow supposed. But – "None of them know about us."

"Yet," Buffy said. "It's a town full of geniuses."

"Which is something we probably should have thought about before this whole thing started," Vi said pointedly. "But, as Isaac Asimov says – there's no way to get that mushroom cloud back in that nice shiny uranium sphere."

"No," Willow sighed. "There isn't. I'll check. I don't have enough time to check everything and still get any sleep tonight; will a spot-check do?"

"Certainly. You are not expected to do the physically impossible," Giles said.

And Xander said, "Yeah. That's a Slayer's job."

Vi said, "Unless Willow's check comes back showing that the Eurekans are eviler than a James Bond villain, I think I'm going to take them up on their offer. At least for a while. This doesn't mean I'd give up on Slaying; I don't think I could. But –"

"'dja really think we'd stop you?" Faith asked. "B spent six months in Rome. Chao-Ahn's Slaying in between chef training sessions, Kenny's going for a business degree in her spare time, Paula's studying to be a Watcher. Hell, even I got myself a GED."

"It's a sacred duty," Giles said. "But it is one under new management. The days of a Slayer being forced to do nothing but Slay are past. That said, it is not a position one can readily give up, either."

"Sure. I know that," Vi said. "Like I said, I couldn't stop entirely, and apocalypses pretty much mean drop everything. Though they've had their share of them around here, too."

"Really?" Dawn and Buffy said at the same time; then Dawn added, "Not a relapse. I promise."

"And if it were?" Willow said.

Xander said, "Okay, so you favor diplomacy."

"Darn right, mister."

"I assume you agree, Vi?" Giles asked.

"I see that 'darn right' and raise you a 'damn straight'."

"You've been hanging out with Xander too long," Buffy said.

"You say that like it was a bad thing," Xander said.

"Okay then. B and I got a heavy night of Slayin' ahead. We done?"

"I believe so," Giles said. "Good evening, all."

After she hung up, Vi asked Willow, "Anything I can do?"

"Get a pizza and something caffeinated. We're going to be up for a while."


	30. 200 Experiments on Toadstools

Douglas Fargo got maybe three hours of sleep that night; what with Vince throwing a huge party to celebrate Beverly's capture, Dukes and Anderson from DoD loudly protesting being blown off, and General Mansfield calling to verbally increase his number of gluteal tracts for exposing an entire town to advanced technology – never mind that it was largely Beverly Barlowe's fault – while simultaneously, albeit grudgingly, giving him credit for finally managing to apprehend the woman, and then demanding to know the method.

This was something they'd worked out, because the truth was both unbelievable and would make them sound insane. "Nothing out of the ordinary," he told the general. "Investigation supplemented with computer research and a little tracking."

"Really?" he sounded skeptical.

"Really."

"Okay," Mansfield said. "But I want a full report on my desk ASAP, and I'll have people there to pick Barlowe up within a day."

"General? At the very least we want to be part of her interrogation. Most of what she did, she did to us."

"We're not shutting you out. Send someone along. Not Donovan or Parrish."

"How about Jo?" Jo got along with Mansfield better than anyone else in Eureka.

"Lupo'd be perfect. Don't let Barlowe get loose. You know how she tricky she is."

"Better than anyone," Fargo said.

On balance, actually one of his more pleasant conversations with Mansfield.

Then there was the call he got after he finally went to sleep on getting home from the party at Café Diem – Martina was the hit of the night; everyone loved her, and she loved the attention – from one of the computer security people. "Director?" the woman said.

"Yes?" he said sleepily. Martina raised her head and gave a querulous sound, and Fargo told her to relax.

As Martina settled back down, the woman said, "This is Jane Hardy from the computer labs. I'm sorry to bother you, but you asked us to be hyper-vigilant about GD's servers and to let you know –"

Right. He'd forgotten to tell them they could drop back to "yellow alert," now that he knew that Willow was the Scarlet Witch. Still – "Yes. What have you found?"

"It's small – you know, I probably shouldn't have called you –"

The reputation of the Fargo who'd grown up in this timeline was that of a semi-tyrannical dictator, and even after a year here he hadn't managed to completely erase it. "I told you to. Don't worry. What was it?"

"It looked like someone was trying to gain unauthorized access to the personnel records."

"Really? Beverly Barlowe's?"

"No – Dr. Blake's. We managed to drive them out, though."

"Are you sure?"

Apparently he put too much stress on that last word, because Jane said in a panicky voice, "I think so! I mean, there's no trace left in the files, and –"

In his most calming voice, Fargo said, "Easy. It's okay. Double-check and then send me a report. I'll go over it in the morning. Good job."

"Thank you," she said. "Goodnight, Director!"

After she hung up – Fargo made a mental note to have Dr. Blake check her stress level, and, for that matter, her caffeine level – Fargo immediately called Willow Rosenberg.

Vi answered. "Hello?" Definitely awake.

"Could you put Willow on the phone?"

"Sure."

A few seconds later: "Hi, Fargo. What's up?" Willow said cheerfully. No one should be that cheerful at 2:17 AM.

"Have you been trying to break into GD again?"

"Of course."

The directness of her answer threw him for a second. "And why would that be?" he asked.

"You told me to. Remember? Big discussion about this afternoon? I'm fixing the security problem."

That made sense; still – "Why did you try to break into Dr. Blake's personnel file?"

"Because I broke into personnel files last time and I was trying to see if I could do it again," she said. "I could. As soon as I realized I could still look around I knew I hadn't sealed it up tightly enough and went back to try again. I didn't see anything other than her name and birthday."

He hadn't expected her to try to plug the hole so quickly, admittedly. "Okay," he said. "I get it. But so we don't panic the rest of the computer people and get them to wake me from a sound sleep at 2:10 in the morning, could you pack it in for now and finish it up tomorrow morning so I have a chance to give them some idea of what's going on?"

"Sure," Willow said. "It'll take me a few minutes, but I won't do anything else until tomorrow morning."  
"Thanks." He hung up, turned the light off and lay down –

And found himself staring right into a dodo's face. "Yes, Martina," he said. "Everything's okay." He skritched her head for a second. "Go back to bed."

"Beuurrr?" she said.

He sighed. "No, you can't get in the bed with me."

"Beuurr . . ." she said, and settled back in her own bed.

Man, dodos' lives were easy.

XxXxX

"You think he believed it?" Vi asked. Hearing both of end of the conversation hadn't been a problem; Slayer hearing.

Shutting down her computer, Willow said, "I don't think he's that good an actor. The alarm spell's on, just in case, but it going off, I'm thinking not. Have you found anything suspicious?"

"Fargo's record includes the phrase 'inappropriately pushed button' forty-one times, and 'inadvertently pushed button' a dozen more, but the most he's done to an unwilling participant is play practical jokes on them. So a bit too DeeDee, maybe, but not likely to go around experimenting on people or building his own demon army. Taggart's got some weird beliefs, but bends over backward to avoid hurting animals. No one else has more than a blip. Certainly nothing that would say they were likely to exploit Slayers, magic, or both."

Willow's look into Allison Blake's personnel file had been a feint for a preprogrammed spell to quickly scour the GD servers for the various personnel files they wanted to look at, and any experiments that could be interpreted as exploiting sentient beings. And it's a good thing it worked quickly, too, because Fargo had called within ten minutes from the time Willow started.

It hadn't nearly had time to look at all of the projects, so it randomly picked through what was available. True, they might get two hundred experiments on toadstools, but that was the risk they had to take. Then they divvied it up: Vi took the biological ones, Willow took the tech-oriented ones, and they split everything else.

A half an hour later Willow was starting to nod off. When Vi looked at the clock, it was 3:00 AM. Slayer metabolism helped Vi, but all Willow had was caffeine, and after all the spells she'd cast that day she was pushing things way beyond what she should. So Vi told her, "bedtime," and against her feeble protests guided her into her room and made sure she was asleep before going back out to the living room to look over more projects.

A half hour later, Vi had found two projects that qualified: One that let people, in effect, switch bodies; the scientist who created it had used it irresponsibly and hadn't been fired, but had been reprimanded, and had eventually left Eureka to marry an astronaut. The other one was a memory eraser; the man who'd taken credit for it had used it to get a woman to marry him and build himself a long career as a genius by taking other people's ideas, erasing their memories, and presenting them as his own. Once he'd been discovered, he'd been fired, and later, thrown in jail; along the way, his wife had divorced him and gotten whatever assets he hadn't had to give back to their creators. The wife had unfortunately died in an accident a few months later.

Everything else either didn't use people, or used them with their consent. That hadn't prevented unintended consequences, but that was sloppiness, not maliciousness, and they were looking for malicious.

She yawned. It was 3:45 AM. Even Slayer stamina didn't give her an exemption from needing some sleep. Willow hadn't pinged anything and Vi'd only caught those two.

And not a single experiment on toadstools.

Off to bed.

XxXxX

Vi's alarm hit at 7:00 AM. She shut it off immediately to make sure Willow didn't wake up one second earlier than necessary.

She got dressed and cleaned up as fast as she could, then brewed some coffee while she went over some more of the projects. The coffee was just done when Willow staggered out of her bedroom, saying, "Why'd you let me oversleep?" in a cranky tone.

"You wouldn't have overslept if I'd let you sleep till noon," Vi said. "You pushed yourself hard yesterday and even the two cups of coffee you'd had weren't stopping you from faceplanting into Dr. Parrish's sleep gun project. Ironically. So we get to GD a bit late today. I don't think we're going to get in trouble. Well, more trouble. Hey, did you find anything last night? You weren't being particularly communicative there at the end."

"I think I caught maybe one word in three," Willow said.

"Right. You just got up. Well, clean up and have some coffee, and then we'll talk."  
Vi had eaten a full breakfast and then some by the time Willow was ready, and also looked over five more projects.

"So," she said, "I don't remember anyone trying to create super-soldiers. A decent number of military projects, but those were mostly new weapons—more than I'd like—but no one was trying to create either a new Adam, Frankenstein monster, or Riley Finn. You?"

So Vi explained what she'd seen, and when she was done Willow said, "Do you think we've seen enough?"  
"Yep. I'm pretty well convinced. They're not perfect, but they're the good guys we though they were."

"Cool. Then I'll scrub my laptop cleaner than clean and we'll go from there." Magic let Willow genuinely erase any trace that files had been there. The finest computer forensics team on the planet, backed by Barbara Gordon, couldn't have gotten anything off of it.

"Then I can stay," Vi said.

"Yeah," Willow said. "I think you can."

Well, alright.

Beverly Barlowe had been captured. Buffy and Dawn weren't each other's puppets. They weren't in serious trouble. And she could stay in Eureka.

Maybe all wasn't right with the world, but her corner of it was pretty good right about now.

Before they left, Willow made a call, once again magically blocking anyone who might attempt to listen in. "Put me through to Giles. Hi, Giles? Yeah, we took a few hours yesterday and did what you asked. We can trust them not to spill our secrets. Yes, I'm sure. So's Vi. Vi, tell him."

Vi put her mouth near the mouthpiece and said, "Yes. And anyone who experimented on unwilling subjects got in trouble."

Taking the phone back, Willow said, "So, is that, you know, good enough, or would you rather we take another, oh, I don't know, fifty years or so, to finish checking the rest of the projects, because there are a lot of them? Oh, I think it was necessary, mister. Get back as soon as possible. Tonight at the latest. Any apocalypses or big bads? Then tonight. Resolve face back atcha. Okay. Have a good day. Thanks." She hung up.

"He sounded a bit dubious," Vi said.

"Just a tad," Willow said, and yawned. "This is going to be a fun day."

"Well, I'm looking forward to it," Vi said, grinning evilly.

"Oh, shut up."

XxXxX

Jo Lupo looked up and saw Willow Rosenberg and Vi Fisher enter the GD Rotunda. Willow like she'd just woken up five minutes ago; Vi looked like she could run a marathon without breaking a sweat, and from what Fargo'd told her she'd been up as late as Willow had.

"I hear you two were busy last night," she said. "That eager to get away from us, huh?" She smiled to make sure they knew she was teasing.

"Oh yeah," Vi said. "You guys are horrible. No, I'm sure you know how it is: Willow got an inspiration last night and of course she had to test it out right away."

"It didn't quite work, though. See how fast someone called Fargo?" Willow said. "I still think it's a good idea but obviously a few more bugs need to be worked out. Sorry to worry everyone."

"Just let us know if you're going to do that again."

"I'm going to do that again," Willow said promptly.

Well, she'd asked.

"Yeah. Fargo's let them know you're going to be continuing on a 'special project' that needs you to try to break in – but you're going to need to let them know when you're going to try so they don't panic and wake Fargo up in the middle of the night. Capisce?"

"The capisciest," Willow said.

Jo thought she got that. "Okay then," she said. "Vi, I'll let you get going. Willow, I have a favor to ask you."  
There was a look between the two, and after a few seconds Vi said, "Cool. I've got a couple of refinements to make to my experiment, anyway. You want to jog at lunch?"

She hadn't expected that, but said, "Sure. Try to keep up with me."

After Vi walked towards the elevators, Jo said to Willow, "Could you do me a favor?"

"Depends what it is," Willow said.

"You know I'm dating Zane, right?"

"Right . . ."

"And you know he was the one who tried to keep you out the first couple of times."

Willow nodded her head. "Yeah. He's really good."

"He is. And he wants to meet you."

With a confused look, Willow said, "I've already met him."

"Wrong you. Not you, Willow Rosenberg; you, the Scarlet Witch. I didn't tell him anything," Jo said hastily, "He just said he'd like to meet the Scarlet Witch if we ever caught her.

"  
"Technically –"

"Carter figured out who you were. Close enough."

Willow shrugged and said, "Good point. Can I trust him?"

Which was a more complicated question than it appeared. Zane was, at heart, something of a rebel, but he stuck by people he respected and liked. He'd spill any secret he had to in order to do what he thought was the right thing, but he'd keep something secret for the same reasons. So – "Basically, yeah. He's not going to screw you over."

"Okay, then. Lead on."

Today, Zane was working on the remnants of the Matrix – the virtual reality environment the Astraeus astronauts had been trapped in. It took them about five minutes to get there from the Rotunda, and when she opened the door she said, "Knock knock."

No answer. The rest of him being buried in a machine, all she could see was Zane's ass. Which was nice and all – okay, spectacular – but staring at it wasn't why she came in here. "Knock knock," she repeated, more loudly.

A muffled, "Jojo?" came from somewhere inside, and then Zane shoved himself out and stood up. "Hey," he said in a suggestive tone, then stopped as soon as he saw Willow. "Rosenberg. Good to see you too. Um, could you kind of stay right there? This is pretty highly classified stuff. Technically you shouldn't even be in here."

"No problem," Willow said.

"Zane? You know how you wanted me to introduce you to the Scarlet Witch if we ever caught her?"

"Yeah. Oh. You're gonna get Rosenberg to track her down Good idea. She's probably the closest thing we've come to her equal."

"Closer than you think," Jo said. "Zane, meet the Scarlet Witch."

"Rosenberg? You?"

"You want me to prove it by hacking the Federal Reserve?" Willow asked.

"Yeah!" Zane said.

"_No_," Jo said firmly. She didn't think Willow would prove it by giving herself a million or so, but she didn't want Fargo to be fielding angry calls from the Chairman of the Fed.

"You never let me have any fun," Zane whined. "But – how?"

Jo gave the designated explanation and finished with, "And she's going to finish plugging the hole before she goes."

"Wow" Zane said. "I'd ask you to marry me, I think, except Jo would kill me."

"Got that right," Jo said, but she wasn't offended.

"I think my girlfriend would beat her to it," Willow said. "Kennedy's the jealous type."

Zane blinked and said, "Jo? Could we speak privately for a second?" After they moved across the room, Zane said, "See if you can get her to stay. If she's the Scarlet Witch I could really use her help with something."

"What with?"

"I think there's someone still inside the Matrix."

XxXxX

And next, the epilogue.


	31. The Matrix Reentered

"Do we have to call him Mr. Ambassador?" Xander said.

"You, yes. The rest of us, no. We can simply refer to him by name," Giles said. He, Xander, and Faith were waiting for the Eurekans' "diplomat." He had opposed this; while he saw the virtue in remaining friendly with the town of geniuses, he hadn't seen the necessity of formal relations. But he had been overruled; of the members of the academy board, only Faith had agreed with him, and Giles suspected it was more for her distrust of extra rules and regulations than anything else.

In any event, the decision had been made, and he would abide by it. Buffy had gone to New York to take charge in Kennedy's temporary absence; Willow had extended her stay in Eureka an extra few weeks and Kennedy did not want to be separated from her for that long. Dawn had gone with Buffy, ostensibly to help with research while Willow was away. Giles suspected, though, that the recent troubles had thrown her, and she was looking to stay with her sister as long as possible.

As for Robin Wood, he'd planned to be here, but administrative necessities had kept him away.

Ah. Here came a man driving what appeared to be a modified pickup truck. He was bald, or nearly so, maybe slightly taller than Giles himself, wearing camouflage gear and hiking boots. Seeing the three of them standing by the front entrance, he strode over to them with a grin on his face and said, "Rupert Giles?" in an Australian accent that he would have sworn was faked if he hadn't seen the man's resume. As he shook Giles' hand he said, "Jim Taggart. Ambassador Jim Taggart, I guess, though that seems so formal and stuffy. You can call me Taggart. Nice to meet you all; Willow and Vi've told me a lot about you. Faith, right?" he said, and shook her hand also. "You're one of the Slayers, right? Did you know about a dozen of your sisters were watching me as I came in. Sneaky little buggers, you Slayers are."

"You couldn't have seen them," Faith said. Giles noticed she didn't deny that they were looking, though he understood that the arrival of Mr. Taggart was something of a curiosity.

"Didn't have to see them. Saw their traces. Bent grass here, a twisted branch there, and a bush moving with no wind."

"How did you know they weren't bad guys coming to attack us?" Xander Harris.

If anything, Mr. Taggart's grin grew wider and tapped his head. "Logic, my friend. The lovely Ms. Rosenberg mentioned alarm spells and I figured people as smart and secretive as you had to have something like that setup. You must be Xander Harris." He shook Xander's hand.

"The eyepatch gave it away, huh?"

"That it did," Mr. Taggart said. "I have to say I'm really looking forward to the experience of hanging out with you folks and learning about vampires and such. Who knows? Maybe I'll even be able to help you track some of the buggers down."

"Do you think yourself capable of fighting a vampire?"

"Mr. Giles, I've fought off pumas, black bears, and crocs with my bare hands, so the answer to that is yes. However, despite my well-known love of adventure I didn't exactly seek those combats out and I'm not so arrogant as to want to trace a vampire just to test my mettle. But if I had, I'd give it my all. And I didn't say anything about fighting one, anyway. I said track. I am a wilderness expert, after all." He grinned. "So, where am I staying? I've got a lot of stuff to unpack."

As Xander and Faith pointed out the cottage that had been reserved for Mr. Taggart – the Academy had several empty on its grounds at all times – Giles mentally reminded himself that it could have been worse; they could have sent the sheriff back, instead . . .

XxXxX

Kennedy had come and spent a fun few days there in Eureka, but had gotten restless in about a week; when Willow noticed, she invited her to go on a wide patrol and just come back in a couple of days.

"You sure?" Kennedy had said anxiously.

"Sweetie," Willow'd said. "I'm glad you joined me, I missed you, I love you, but you need to be killing monsters a bit more than you need to be staying with me 24/7. Go hit some of the nearby towns. I'll be okay and you'll feel a lot better when you come back."

"Okay," she'd said, "If you're sure."

"I'm sure. Now skedaddle, missy."

"Skedaddling, ma'am."

This was why she couldn't stay. Well, one of the reasons; being out of touch when it came time for the next apocalypse was well up the list, too, but if she stayed here, she'd either have to break up with Kennedy – and she didn't want to do that, have a long-distance relationship (which neither one of them wanted) or make Kennedy miserable by asking her to stay with her, and that would torment her.

So, she'd already blocked the route by which she'd accessed the GD servers from the outside. She couldn't a hundred percent guarantee no one could ever break in, but it would take someone as good as she was at hacking, and better at magic, and no arrogance intended, but that, going to be pretty rare.

So, that taken care of, she turned her attention to helping Zane with the Matrix – and if there was something that showed the difference between the scientists of Eureka and the scientists who for ethical reasons weren't good enough to be at Eureka, Senator Wen's team's use of the Matrix was it. A completely immersive virtual reality environment could have a lot of legitimate uses – therapeutic, entertainment, even as a kind of prison or interrogation technique for the right kind of criminal – convincing a captured terrorist that they'd escaped, for instance, to see what their plans were.

But to make money by enslaving people and co-opting their genius for themselves? Wrong. Beyond wrong. And that's why she didn't have much sympathy for Beverly Barlowe, who balked at cold-blooded murder but seemed to have no problem with extended enslavement.

And now there was this. The machine was here in Eureka; the programmers/designers weren't, and weren't talking. Beverly Barlowe's involvement had been limited to making sure the neurological part of things was accurate, so the amount of help she could give was strictly limited. Not that she was feeling cooperative anyway.  
Zane was more of a hardware person than Willow was, so his task was to make sure the machine was working. It was Willow's job to find out what the programming oddity he'd found was. It was an exceptionally complex array of data; far more complex than anything else present in the environment.

"Zane?" she said.

"What do you need, Wanda?" Zane's little joke.

"How far are we away from being able to actually turn this thing on and go inside?"

"I'd have to put a few things back and make sure the power source was absolutely uninterruptible, but we could probably do that in a couple of hours. Why?"

"I think I've done as much as I can here without being able to go inside and take a look. Whatever this is, it's active."

"It could be the dragon," Zane said.

"Oh, I've dealt with those before," Willow said.

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Inside joke and I forgot you weren't inside. If it's the dragon, I'm sure we can arrange some way of pulling me out."

Nodding, Zane said, "Sure. I'll hook myself up to an electrocardiography machine – and an electroencephalography one as well, just to be safe. Any significant fluctuations and either and you can pull me out."

"Whoa, hold on, and back up a minute, mister," Willow said. "What makes you think you get to go inside?"

Smirking, Zane said, "Seniority."

Willow nodded. "Okay. So that'll leave me in charge of the machine. Fair enough. Hardware's not my specialty, but I can get by."

Zane gave her a sour smile. "You think you're so clever."

"Sometimes I do, yeah," Willow said.

"Okay," he said. "But I get seconds. And you have to explain to Dr. Blake why we need her stuff without actually explaining to her why we need her stuff." That the Matrix had survived was not a secret; that Willow and Zane were trying to ferret out its secrets, was. Only she, Zane, Fargo and Jo knew the full extent of what was going on.

Still, persuading Dr. Blake, not really a problem. And it turned out to technically not have been necessary; Willow could have simply requisitioned the medical devices. She suspected Zane had been playing a practical joke on her.

Ah well.

She was lying down on a makeshift hospital bed, sensors attached (heart and brain machines in Eureka hardly needed wired-up electrodes, and Zane brought down one of the Matrix's helmet thingies.

Abruptly, she found herself on Main Street in what seemed to be a deserted Eureka. This was the environment the kidnapped Astraeus astronauts had found themselves in, and the first thing Willow had checked was that the anomaly was not the environment itself, though the program was still going: she could see and feel the effects of the wind, for instance, and the clouds overhead were moving. Presumably there were animals in the surrounding wilderness, too.

So that was all more or less expected. She needed to find something not expected.

Or it needed to find her. A couple of subjective minutes later, she felt a tap on her shoulder and years of being a member of the Slayers' auxiliary had her instinctively spin around and set herself in a fighting stance.

What she saw, however, wasn't a vampire, demon, or anything else that went bump in the night.

The startled tapper jumped back herself and said, "Sorry. Excuse me. Who are you?"

"Holy crap," Willow managed to mutter after a few seconds.

"Really? I didn't think holy crap would look like you. Learn something new every day I guess. Hi. I'm Holly Marten. Who are you?"

"I know. I work with your niece, and boy do the two of you look alike."

"Yeah," she said. "It's almost like the Patty Duke Show except we're identical aunt and niece, not identical cousins. So, I have a question: Where is everyone? I mean, I know this isn't the real world but I would have thought someone would have come looking for me by now."

Willow raised her hand. "Say hi to someone."

"Oh. O-"

And that was all she said before Willow found herself back on the bed, with Zane lifting the helmet. "Why did you do that?" she asked.

"Your heart rate spiked. What did you find?"

"Not what, who."

"Huh?"

"I found Holly Marten. She's alive in there."

"How would you know? You never met her." A second later, "That was one of the dumbest things I've ever said. We have to get her out of there."

"You think?"

XxXxX

And yes, that's it. Think of it as a hook. Or, technically, a hook and a half; the adventures of Taggart in the land of vampires would be entertaining but probably wouldn't sustain a full story. Maybe some stand-alones.


End file.
